


The Village

by naturalselection



Series: Saltwater Room [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-06
Updated: 2012-07-06
Packaged: 2017-11-09 07:18:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 57,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/452798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naturalselection/pseuds/naturalselection
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A nuclear war happened in the past, and though civilisation has since recovered, a number of children have been born with strange symptoms from the radiation released.<br/>Vriska is an ordinary human who finds herself turning into a grey skinned, horned mutant and is taken, along with other mutants, by the Condesce to what humanity believes to be a containment facility, though in reality they are being conditioned into soldiers.<br/>First they are sorted into groups, then Vriska, Tavros and Sollux must fight against seven other mutant teams for the right to enter the Condesce's custody, or they will be killed themselves.</p><p>The story is sci-fi and dystopian mostly, with adventure, romance and a Battle Royale/Hunger Games feel to it, set on Earth in roughly 2090.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lousy goddamn stupid radiation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Rated T for the frequent use of strong language, violence and (barely) sexual scenes.**

**This is an alternate universe set in about 2090 or so. There may be spoilers and some resemblance to plot in Homestuck, but most will deviate a lot. The title is from the Owl City song, Saltwater Room.**

**Homestuck belongs to Andrew Hussie**

* * *

It was apparent from the first grey mole, that Vriska Serket was in for some deep, deep shit. At first, she had assumed that the innocent blob on her forearm was a speck of paint, and when it refused to budge, that it had dyed her skin. Another speck of this grey appeared, followed by another in the following month. Around the time of these, she had been painting a rather magnificent portrait of herself as the persona of Marquise Spinneret Mindfang, her character in RPGs. Although little grey had been used on such a painting, she was in complete denial about the situation, so convinced herself that those were the reasons.

When more of the pesky grey spots appeared, around ten or so, she took to painting over them in a more convincing brown, stopping her mum from being nosy, seeing the grey splotches, flipping out and getting her thrown away somewhere nasty with no internet.

Her first completely grey patch of skin formed on the inside of her left thigh, a little way above her knee, nearly four months after the first mole. This was easily hidden, as long as she did not get a sudden craving for short shorts (unlikely) or went swimming (her family was not one for swimming anyway). The patch, unlike the moles, spread outwards at a rate of about a millimetre a day, joined by a second patch near the small of her back. About a month after the patches, something far harder to conceal began. The whites of her eyes began to turn a vivid yellow hue. It was now that she figured it was time to tell her mum.

Mum, or Spidermum as Vriska liked to call her behind her back, was a domineering control freak of a woman. A trait that Vriska had inherited. Her mum disliked anything being out of her power, and when she found out that her daughter had a rapidly spreading 'problem', her option was not to weep from fear and worry, but to hole her up in the basement until further notice, concerned that it could potentially be contagious to her other offspring. Spidermum was so named due to her love of all things arachnid, with spiders running freely throughout the house, cobwebs hanging casually on doorways and windows alike. This love of arachnids had, too, been passed on to her first child. Spidermum was proud of this; she did not want Vriska to grow up being a simpering girl afraid of all but puppies and kittens, she would be strong, unafraid of all. This eventually led to the girl becoming a huge and renowned bitch to cope with all around her, easily bored with her 'weak' classmates and oddly enough, a strong believer in luck.

Vriska had suspected for a long time that the reason for the controlling attitude of her mother, was that when she was pregnant with Vriska, her boyfriend of the time, a young Spanish man, got one whiff of the fact that he had knocked up his eighteen year old girlfriend, and ran off. Leaving his daughter to be raised solely by the mother. Sure they got by, but ever since, her mother had not let a single thing escape her. From then on, Vriska always wondered why Spidermum had not just gotten an abortion and carried on with her life, but whatever.

But locking her daughter away from the sunlight, of course, did little to help, and by the end of the year Vriska's skin was ashy grey, with tan bands on her face and arms. The final fronts of a losing war with the grey. Her body could no longer fight it, but her mother would not give up, so she remained hidden in the basement, her only source of entertainment the computer. Being a massive fan of Fatal Online Role Play (FORP), she decided that there could be worse situations; at least the wi-fi signal was pretty good.

School friends enquired her whereabouts at first, wondering where she had been for so long, but she ignored them, setting on working her way up the levels. If she worked hard enough, she could finally overtake some of her trashy schoolmate's scores. Yes. She would try to gain all of the levels available to her 'Petticoat Seagrift' class. All of them. But as time went on, and her boredom increased, along with her frustration at being pent up, she took to killing fellow player's avatars. It was part of the game after all. She couldn't claim to enjoy it, but it stopped her from smashing her head on the walls for fun. Spidermum would probably have a fit if she saw her daughters pretty blue blood spilt all over the concrete floor. Three times a day, food was pushed through the door, and each morning, a change of clothes appeared next to her.

arachnidsGrip [AG] began trolling gallowsCalibrator [GC]

AG: Hey 8itch! AG: We were meant to 8egin a raid twenty minutes ago.

AG: Don't think you can avoid me.

AG: Or are you scared may8e?

AG: ;;;;)

AG: Is the little 8a8y scared she'll get hit?

Vriska set out the bait and waited for the reply, but half an hour later, with still no response she gave up.

AG: Fine. Your loss.

arachnidsGrip [AG] has ceased trolling gallowsCalibrator [GC]

If she had been inclined in such a direction, she would have hit the keyboard in frustration, but managed to resist the urge, no matter how delightfully satisfying it would be. Terezi, one of her few friends, was not online, and it was not as if she could magically make her switch her computer on or anything… although such powers would be fun.

Bluh, her head was killing her. For reasons she guessed were to do with the greying of the skin, she had been getting splitting headaches on either side of her temple. Some days it was bad enough that she would remain in bed all day feeling sorry for herself. When she was particularly lucky, her mother would leave her with some paracetamol, though it was not really strong enough to hold back the pain. But it was a nice thought. As nice as Spidermum got.

* * *

Another week passed before a visitor came into her basement. He was a portly, old gentleman by the name of Dr. Deaff. A specialist, as he informed her, in mutations. And the dread that had been slowly rising within Vriska began a sudden, steep rise until it reached the level of 'oh shiiiiiiiit'. 

"You must be Vriska, I expect. Your mother has told me all about you." he said, shaking her hand. Spidermum's form was silhouetted in the doorway, a row of stairs currently her only obstacle, along with her mum, to freedom. But there would be no escaping past her mother. She was oddly strong given her looks. "Please, do come sit down Ms Serket." 

Reluctant to enter the room where her daughter had been festering for months, she shook her head. 

"You have no need to worry, madam. I can assure you that her condition is not contagious." Pulling up another chair from the corner, her mum sat a hesitant distance from Vriska, not fully believing the doctor's words. "Now then. Where is the switch in here? I can barely see you with this low light." 

"That's kind of the point, dumbass." Vriska sighed, irritated at how thick the doctor was being. Yet either he did not hear her, or ignored her, as there was no visible reaction. The obnoxiously bright lights were flicked on, and the grey-skinned girl saw the extent of the problem. Her body was still holding the line on her arms, the horizontal stripes of soft, brown skin boldly showing. 

Gently picking her arm up with his wizened hands, he prodded the differently coloured bands. Curiously, the grey areas were tougher, almost, in comparison to her normal skin. "Your arms are holding out longer than most. Very interesting. As for the whites of your eyes, they are completely yellow now, although there's a large amount of redness. Have you been rubbing them?" 

"Seriously? Of course I have. Do you know how much they ache?" He was unperturbed, perhaps used to such behaviour. "I can barely sleep at night through the pain." 

"Have you tried ignoring it?" he suggested, leaning his face on a fist propped on the chair's armrest. 

"Have you tried coming up with ideas that aren't completely shit?" Vriska spat back. Truth be told, she was enjoying it; she had not spoken face to face with someone for a long time. Sure, driving the man away was not the best idea for a long conversation, but she was annoyed. "I've been getting headache, toothache, eyeache, itching all over my skin. Puberty is shit enough already without all this bull. You're a doctor, right? Can you fix it?" 

"I can see that the changes you are experiencing are making you irritable. Now, before we leave, are you having any issues with your head? In particular, these two areas just above your ears." he enquired. She gave a curt nod. As if this deemed permission, he ran his fingers over the area of skull he had specified, finding hair fell away willingly as he pulled his fingers away. By the time he cleared away the hair, she was left with two bald patches, looking as if someone had cut a ping pong ball in half and stuck it on either side of her head. The lumps were covered in a fine, fur-like coat, with something that was evidently going to be hard growing underneath. 

"Wait, before we leave? We as in you and mum?" 

"Oh, no. It appears that there is nothing amiss with your mother's genetic makeup."

Aiming for sarcasm, she said, "Is a straight answer too much to ask for?" 

"Quite, Ms Serket. Now, what you must understand is that what we are doing is for the best. With the recent outbreaks, we simply cannot afford to have your kind running around willy-nilly." 

"Are you senile? You just said that this lame ass shit wasn't contagious. Why would you need to move me if it isn't going to spread?" she demanded. "

Because your appearance causes some significant distress, and what with the current state of the country, we can't allow this to happen." The doctor pushed his glasses further up his face once more. "Surely you want to see us back to how we once were, before the war? If people think things are going back to normal once more, then things will settle. There are riots nearly every week in various parts of the country over political matters as it is. Imagine how much worse it would get with people like you causing alarm." 

"You can't just deny that I exist! I'm stood right in front of you! This is making as much sense as the situation in the first place." she paused for breath. "You're a doctor aren't you? Isn't it your job to make people better? Or are you as bad at that as you are at remembering things from three seconds ago?" 

The doctor's eyes narrowed before he stood, "Our base is located in New Mexico in the United States, which is where we're taking you. You are allowed to bring one item with you, not including prescription items. Choose wisely. You may have ten minutes with your family before I return to collect you. Of course, you may leave earlier than that if you wish."  The door was then shut. 

Looking up at her mother, Vriska was not sure what to say. After all, her mum had essentially just sold her off to this man, unwittingly or not. Not to mention the whole 'locked in a basement' thing. That was pretty bad as well. Deciding to then ignore her presence, the grey-skinned girl began rummaging around in the drawer of her current bedside table for a small box, in which was a set of eight eight-sided dice. Once found, she slipped it into her pocket and turned to face her mum. 

Opening her mouth in preparation for a suitably sarcastic yet slightly heartfelt goodbye, she was interrupted by her sisters footsteps plodding down the stairs. 

"So it really isn't contagious, right?" At twelve, only a year younger than Vriska, her sister was more similar to her personality wise than she liked to admit. With sandy blonde hair and grey eyes, she had inherited her mother's characteristics more than her sister had, and was the result of a rebound a year later. This time, her mother had ordered the poor man off, removing any chance of him walking out on her like with the previous boyfriend. "Because I really don't want to turn out like you." 

"Thanks, brat." Vriska replied instinctively, barely taking in what she had actually said. "So… I guess this is the last time I'll be seeing you for a while." 

"Huh?" The girl cast a confused look to both members of her family. "Where are you going? Isn't he going to heal you?" 

Spidermum shook her head. 

"But isn't that his job?" 

Vriska spat, "That's what I thought too. Seems he's so shitty at it, that he's just going to ship me off to America instead. Doesn't want to scare the neighbours or something. So, I doubt we'll meet again soon." 

"But that's stupid!" 

"Yeah, well it's life." the girl replied, trying to keep her frustration to a minimum, but failing tremendously, resulting in snapping back. "I'll see you later, brat, mum." In an odd display of affection, she hugged each member of the family curtly, then headed off to the doctor. Well. As her mum always joked, that's why she had two daughters. One for backup.

A large van awaited her in the front garden. Grey, ironically enough, with an area in the back where she would be placed in and removed. From what she could see, there were a large number of locks and bolts on the door, and on the inside a mixture of bedding materials for the trip across the Atlantic. She had seen such removals of her kind before. Most violent and horrid. 

Deciding to exit in a dignified fashion, Vriska hopped up into the back of the van, and sat down in the pile of blankets and pillows, noting the dents on the inside of the vehicle. The doors were slammed and bolted shut. The engine started and the van began it's long journey across the pond to America.

* * *

Your name is VRISKA SERKET. 

You are a master of EXTREME ROLE PLAYING. You can't get enough of it, or really any game of high stakes and chance. 

You are somewhat of an APOCALYPSE NERD. You are fascinated by end of the world scenarios, and enjoy thinking up DOOMSDAY DEVICES for the hell of it. You often consult issues to your MAGIC EIGHT BALLS, but routinely destroy them in frustration over the PUZZLING GUARANTEED INACCURACY of their predictions. With each you destroy, you add to an insurmountable stockpile of TERRIBLE LUCK.

Your skin has been turning an ALARMING SHADE OF GREY recently. This is because the background radiation from a WORLDWIDE SEMI-NUCLEAR WAR corrupted your cells when you were still a bundle of stem cells. This makes you a MUTANT. This would be pretty freaking AWESOME if it was not happening in real life. 

Lousy goddamn stupid radiation.


	2. A long, hot ride

So. Much. Sunlight.

Hailing from the UK, Vriska was used to the occasional sunny spell throughout most of the year, perhaps a few solid days in summer if lucky. But New Mexico, whoa.

After being driven from her small southern town to Luton airport, the van compartment she was in opened and she was put inside another locked area, this time on a private jet. Inside she was greeted by a pretty girl with the same condition as her; the grey skin and yellow whites to the eyes. The same raised bumps on either side of the temples, except hers looked sore and weepy, a yellowish pus oozing from broken skin. She smiled at Vriska, offering a companionable, "Bonjour." dark hair shifting around her. But judging by the dull, red scabs, she was particularly low on the hemospectrum, so Vriska ignored her, as she had been raised to do. Seemingly used to this, the girl shrugged and went back to staring at the wall, curled into an upright foetal position.

A decade or two prior to Vriska's conception, a war broke out over the dwindling oil reserves available to the developed world. Any oil rich country had long since holed up with their oil and banned any movement into and out of their country. And hell, if you were in a country that still had oil, like hell would you leave. There were still small amounts of oil in the North Pole, but activists were protecting it furiously, lobbying and often destroying any organisation that tried to get near it. Other than buying the entire area or bombing it, there was little chance of getting the oil, or rather, the theoretical oil there.

So instead, the heads of governments decided the next best thing to do would be start wars with other countries to get their final reserves. There was the potential of extra fuel, and with luck, they would get rid of a couple thousand of their mouths to feed. Worldwide, populations were almost at eight billion, so naturally there was very little food to go around. The less people, the better in terms of food production. Farmers were now in high demand. But what they did not take into account was that many countries harboured missiles perfect for attacking other countries. And so when Europe was threatened, for the first time in a while, the UK worked together with its continent and defended them from the other countries, while equally attacking and trying to loot others for oil.

When it finally ended with the fall of the oil empire, countries were lost, confused like scared children separated from their parents. And yet, nuclear fusion came along, sweeping them up and setting them upon their feet once more with the help of renewable energies, and for a while, everything was okay once more. Orphaned children found new homes, families rebuilt homes, communities, and farms were set up.

But a group of overly rich and snobby scientists decided that it was unjust that they should be thought of as the same caste as the person next door to them, merely because of their current situation. And so, they devised a strange virus that would take into account how closely they were related to the royalty of the country (current or most recent) by genetics, simply so that when things were back to normal, there would be none of the whole 'we are all equal, joined by the devastation that befell us' attitude. The closer you were related, the more violet the colour of your blood would be, and one would be caught in a violent flu as all the red blood cells within changed completely. The further away you got your blood changed through royal purple, indigos, blues, greens, yellows, oranges and browny reds. The original colour of blood was lost… although there were rumours that, like with every virus, there were some with inbuilt natural immunity whose blood remained the same colour. It was also said that the heads of state saw them as a reminder of the past, and killed them. Naturally, a great deal of people decided that it was insanity, but they were ignored, and the virus released anyway. Those who opposed the hemospectrum were deemed jealous peasants, the nobility suddenly found in many turning people arrogant., and they were locked up.

How they changed the red pigment in the red blood cells, derived from the iron in the haemoglobin that picked up the oxygen in first place… well, it was a mystery to most. Needless to say, red blood cells were a topic that had since been dropped from the A-Level biology curriculum.

And then the mutations began…

The rest of their plane journey was spent in a slightly awkward silence. Bland, white walls surrounded the two of them, with the same bundles of blankets strewn across the floor for them to wrap around themselves. Without heating, it was bloody cold. Primarily, Vriska had refused the blankets, deciding that she should set an example to the French low blood, but she had only been wearing her thin pyjamas when she was taken from her house, so soon was so cold that she let the kind girl drape a couple of blankets over her shivering frame. After that, she did not give her such cool, indifferent glances. A small meal of dried fruits -apricot, grape and plum- was given to each of them, along with some milk in a container that looked suspiciously like a baby's bottle, presumably to stop the liquid inside from spilling everywhere. It made her feel like a toddler, but she was too thirsty to give a damn.

After their simple meal, Vriska muttered, "And still better than mum's cooking." In a totally ironic way, of course. She was not certain how much the French girl understood of it, but judging by the snort of amusement, she got enough.

They arrived in New York first, following the long flight over the Atlantic Ocean. Their plane needed refuelling as far as Vriska could gather at first… or perhaps the pilot needed a break? But there was a co-pilot for that, so that option was ruled out. It was only when more of the grey-skinned mutant children were pushed inside that she understood they were being collected. It was two purple-blooded children, with strange fin-like protrusions on either side of their faces. One, a slightly chubby girl with weird goggles, the other, a strange, intense boy with a purple streak in his otherwise dark hair. For a few horror-filled seconds, Vriska wondered if that's what the lumps on her head would turn into, but then saw they, too, had the lumps above their face-fins. These two were royalty, and yet they too had been carelessly shoved into the back of the plane like commoners. She guessed that being a mutant automatically removed any privileges you had, silently musing, 'Presiding over all others regardless my ass.'

The French girl greeted them as she had with Vriska, but from the male she received only a stony silence, similar to that that the blue-blood had offered. Yet the royal purple-blooded girl shook her hand warmly, conversing back in slightly accented French, surprising the two original passengers. In all fairness, most high bloods were complete arses, especially to a girl with blood as low on the hemospectrum as her.

"Bonjour, mon nom est Feferi! Et toi?" she said excitedly, although her French was slightly off. It was then when Vriska realised who they were. It was all over the news, a pair of orphans had been found with very high status blood in a rural area of Russia. One, Feferi Peixes, had direct linkage to the lost princess of Russia, Anastasia. The other, Eridan Ampora, was the descendant of a German queen. And from that day that they were found, they were boosted up to a near god-like status. Child stars. The fame went to Eridan's head, with Feferi remaining down to earth and sensible, although over excitable. Furthermore, as a joke, it seemed, the scientists who had developed the mutating virus had made it that the closest relation to Anastasia would have the highest possible blood caste, assuming that her linage had died out. Evidently it had not. But, it seemed that they still were not immune to mutations.

The maroon and purple bloods continued talking for a good deal of the second part of the flight, despite the other purple-blood trying to discourage his friend. Well, there was always going to be one jerk of a high blood. More than one, generally. Vriska, after noticing Eridan's glare returned it, honestly not giving a damn at the moment for his high-blood status. It was fun to act all domineering over low-bloods herself, but when it came to her respecting those higher than her… well, they had to earn that respect. Needless to say, Eridan was not.

For the next journey, Vriska was surprised to see the low blood sink off to sleep, using a folded blanket as a pillow, shortly followed by the arrogant Eridan, nodding off onto Feferi's shoulder. She was not sure how much of that had been an accident. Having never flown before, and rather enjoying the feeling, Vriska wanted to spend as much of this time awake as possible. If only there was actually a way to fly… nah, enough of that. There was not another way, other than an aeroplane, and there was fat chance of her going in a plane again after what was going to happen.

"Hi, I'm Feferi Peixes! What's your name?" Feferi asked, holding her hand out for Vriska to shake. Hesitantly, she took it, slightly confused as to what to do in situations such as shaking the hand of the highest possible blood caste.

"Vriska Serket. But you didn't need to say who you are. It's not like you're a low blood or anything."

The purple-blooded girl wrinkled her nose in distaste, "Please don't remind be about that. I'm kind of fed up of all this 'high blood low blood' rubbish. If I hadn't gotten this stupid mutation I would have seen to getting rid of the hemospectrum." She pouted, shifting to brush some hair from her face, jostling Eridan slightly. When he muttered something in his sleep she made a 'shh' noise, and he fell silent again. For a while, they did not speak, the blue-blood shocked at what Feferi had said. Only low bloods spoke of the removal of the caste system. To hear one with the highest blood type speak of wanting to get rid of it… it was odd, to be brutally honest.

Feferi broke the silence once more, "So, what item did you bring with you?"

"Uh… some dice. "

"Ooh, glub! Can I see?" the girl cried, way too excited than was necessary. Confused at the glubbing, Vriska nevertheless pulled out the box of dice from her dressing gown pocket. Nestled in the plush velvet of the box, the blue, eight-sided dice looked mysterious and precious, glinting like sapphires. "May I have a go? They look fun!"

Vriska hesitated, and then shut the box. "I've been having bad luck at the moment, I'd rather not. Besides, you'd have to move him, and I'd rather not have him grumping all over my ass again."

"Yeah, Eridan can be pretty… overbearing at times… well, all of the time." Wow, had she hit a sore spot? "But I'm sure he'll grow out of it. His voice has been going a bit weird, all high, then low, then high again. He already has a weird accent, so it makes him sound all wavy! Glub! So that's been making him kind of grumpier than usual."

As both of the purple-bloods were found at a young age, they were shipped off to New York of all places, and taught English there. While easy-going Feferi had near abandoned what slight accent she had, Eridan had not, and kept it with full pride. But having not heard him speak, Vriska would have to take the high blood's word for it; she highly doubted she would lie over something as insubstantial as her friends voice breaking, or his accent.

"Anyway, I brought my goggles with me. I just found them one day, back in Russia, and… I'm kinda fond of them. Why would anyone throw these away?"

"Gee, I don't know… they look kind of lame." she replied, barely thinking.

"Well, your dice are kind of lame!" Feferi cried back, startling Eridan awake.

"Is she botherin' you, Fef?" he demanded instantly.

"What's it to you, asshole?" Vriska shot back, butting in partially to hear him show more of his weird accent, also because he seemed easy to wind up.

"Wwhat's it to me? She's my Fef, that's wwhat." At this, Vriska burst into laughter at his pronunciation of the letter W, all wavy and odd, as well as the general sappiness of his words.

Smirking, she mimicked, "Wwhat? I didn't catch that."

"Low-life blue-blooded filth." he snarled.

"Eridan, don't be like this! Just ignore her for glubs sake!"

"Wwhat's that? You'll have to say it louder!" she sang, taunting him further, eager for an emotion release for the stress this whole mutant business was causing, and this complete tool was just the type. Although, honestly, she did not expect for him to lunge at her neck, trying to choke her. Excellent.

Grabbing either end of his ridiculous scarf, she yanked at it, choking him in return until his face turned an amusing shade of purple. Feferi and the French girl, who had since awakened, attempted to intervene with little progress. Vriska kneed him in the crotch, making him wince and falter in his throttling, before he returned the favour with a strong punch to her jaw. Good, she hated guys who held back simply because she was a girl.

"Arrête! S'il vous plaît!" the French girl ordered, grabbing Vriska and pulling her out from underneath the enraged purple-blood.

Feferi too restrained Eridan, seemingly stronger than she appeared at a glance. "Eridan! Stop this right now! She's not worth it!"

They glared at each other wildly, one grinning madly despite the cerulean blood leaking from a cut on a cheek, the other seething with rage. It seemed that one of the many rings on his fingers had cleaved her skin open when he had hit her. In all honestly, it stung like hell, but she was not about to admit such a fact. Both were panting heavily, their scuffle lasting nearly a minute in length.

One of the guards used for capturing the mutants if needed finally barged in; demanding to know what all the scuffling had been about. Vriska gave a disgustingly sugary smile and replied in a mock British accent, "We were just letting off a bit of steam, g'vner."

They picked up their final passenger, a strange boy who seemed preoccupied with his iPhone, the item he had decided to take with him, presumably. Feferi tried striking up conversation with him as well, but Eridan stopped her, perhaps concerned that he could turn out to be a violent psycho like Vriska had. Although he said little to her, and what did come out had a fairly irritating lisp to it, from which she gathered he was called Thollux, or something like that. Probably Sollux considering the lisp. So, instead, the purple-blood spoke to the French girl, who turned out to be called Aradia. Well, that was fine with Vriska. Yet she continued to have a staring contest with Eridan, who was now seated next to 'Fef' at the opposite side of the aircraft. Man, was he easy to manipulate. It was ridiculously funny, actually.

By the time they landed and were bundled into a minibus together, it was very early morning, a fine mist covering the world and their eyebrows, making the lumps on their heads ache with the cold. They were assured, however, that they should not worry, as it would soon heat up quite a bit. Well, they were certainly right with that bit.

Apparently, either the roads on the way to this centre were covered with a shocking amount of potholes, or their vehicle had no suspension, as they were thrown about painfully. As soon as the minibus began to move, Vriska yanked the seatbelt out and clipped it across her body securely. She did not want to be hurled across the bus, thank you very much. Sollux, still maddeningly tapping away at his iPhone's screen, dropped the gadget on one particularly bouncy section of road. As if he had lost a diamond, he franticly began searching the ground for it, finding it before the guards at the front of the bus noticed. There was a small nick on the screen now, but other than that, no damage.

The sun soon began to peep over the horizon line, and as it rose, so did the temperature inside. They began the journey at a mild thirteen degrees Celsius and only a few hours later, found themselves in temperatures over thirty degrees, although rigorous air conditioning kept it bearable. She would have thought that with such super secret organisations, stealing away mutants and hiding them away… they would have higher tech vehicles, but no. The minibus in the middle of the desert. Maybe it was reverse psychology, as no one would suspect this old minibus of containing a load of mutants. Or maybe it was the fact that they were in the middle of a wasteland, had not seen another soul and as such did not need a high tech van. Yeah, it was probably that.

Following the first hour driving in the sun, the minibus began to fill with the unmistakable odour of overly hot, sweaty people. To speak for herself, Vriska, not expecting visitors in her basement prison, had only given herself a quick sluice down that morning, forgetting deodorant and now fully reaping the consequences, the dressing gown long since cast beside her. Not that the others were doing much better. She could smell Sollux's reek from where he sat two seats in front of her, and judging by the wrinkling of Aradia's nose as she subtly tried to see if the smell was coming from her, she too was contributing. The guards in their once crisp, white shirts had visible sweat patches under their arms and on their backs.

Loud panting began to fill the bus as the two purple-blooded mutants tried to cool down unsuccessfully; Feferi fanning her face with her hands, and Eridan somehow swishing his facial-fins backwards and forwards to get some cooling air over their surfaces. Much like an elephant flapping its ears in fact. At first, Vriska was merely amused at their antics, yet when Eridan collapsed against the goggled-girl, the situation began to appear direr than first anticipated. She managed a croaky "W-water," before she too collapsed, the guards flicking a glance between themselves.

"Water!" Aradia cried, fairly certain it was 'eau' in English. "Allez! Vite, vite!"

"Watch your language, rust-blood." One of the closer guards snapped, but nevertheless brought a bottle of water over, pouring some into each of the royal's mouths. Once Feferi's eyelids fluttered, the guard pushed the bottle into Aradia's grip before stalking back to the front, flicking back to the page of the book she'd been reading.

Not once looking up from his iPhone, Sollux explained, "Those high-bloodth need more water than the rest of uth. Something to do with their blood." Aradia thought for a moment, translating as much as she could in her head, before nodding slowly. It made sense… well, as much as the hemospectrum did to begin with. The maroon-blooded mutant continued nursing the two high-bloods, allowing them to sip at the water until they were able to hold the bottle up themselves. Eridan graciously tried to get Feferi to drink the most of it, yet she would not hear of it, insisting that he drank equal amounts of it as her.

From the left side of the bus, Vriska watched them. Aradia was certainly holding up the best, followed by Sollux. Neither seemed to want for much water. The olive and teal-blooded guards shared a bottle of liquid between them, although she could not be certain as to what it contained. She herself was getting a little thirsty, although she was not about to admit to this, and how the purple-bloods handled their loss of water was plain to see. Although awake, they appeared weary and dehydrated, in serious need of some TLC.

"Come on Fef, you need it more than me. An' I'm fine aren't I?" he reasoned. True, he was in better condition than her, if only by a fraction.

Feebly, she protested, "No! You're having exactly the same! Stop being so glubbing stupid."

"You know the higher your blood, the more wwater you need. You stop bein' so glubbin' stupid." He mocked her slightly, if only to get her to drink more out of irritation. It was sweet, if not a little backwards in logic, but worked nonetheless. Seemingly not wanting to be known for killing the girl with the highest blood caste worldwide, the guards brought her another bottle, along with the same arguments.

"No, Eridan, you are going to drink as much of this as me this time,"

"I freakin' wwell don't need as much a' it as you do!"

"Whale, honestly, I don't want to have this argument again. Just drink it!" Feferi harrumphed when Eridan refused once more.

"Wait, whale? What the hell have whales got to do with this?" Vriska asked, confused at the sudden appearance of marine mammals in a conversation on who was going to drink more of the water.

"Elle aime les poisons beaucoup." Aradia tried to explain, but was halted by her poor English, then shrugged and attempted anyway. "Euh, she likes the fish related jokes, yes? Is jokes the word?"

The high-blood nodded curtly, "Well, puns. But yes, that's basically it." Then proceeded to ignore Vriska, either because of her insulting of the goggles, or for setting Eridan off into a blind rage. It seemed she had not made any friends yet, and did not intend to.

Leaning forwards over the back of the seat in front, Vriska jabbed Sollux in one shoulder blade and said, "Can't be getting a signal out here, surely."

He turned his head just a little, as if to acknowledge her existence, and then went back to his typing.

"And how are you going to charge it? Pretty useless choice."

"I have my wayth."

"Yeah… well, I'll take your word for it. Just so you don't feel bad about your pathetic choice when it runs out of charge and you're left with a lump of shit," she taunted, but it seemed that Sollux was not so easily enraged. "And what are you even doing anyway?"

"That's none of your busineth." He did not even sound vaguely irritated. Oh, he was good.

Vriska pouted, then when she glimpsed a scroll of text, tried, "Writing fan fiction are we? Or ith that too thilly?"

"My overriding manly scent must be affecting your poor mind if you're thith eager to speak to me." he drawled. He even ignored her mocking of his lisp! Shit. Vriska was out of ideas… for now. 'This is by no means over, Sollux.' Aradia snorted at the boy's reply, and unbeknownst to Vriska, a small smirk crossed Sollux's face for a split second. He adjusted his weird, dual-coloured glasses before resuming the stream of text flowing from his fingers.

"Bluh." Vriska sat back down in her seat as the bus driver yelled at her to stay in her chair like a good little mutant. She kindly offered him a one-fingered salute in return for his helpful advice.

God. When would this never-ending stream of wilderness and blue-sky stop? For the first quarter of an hour it was interesting, novel even, and since then it had become boring for her. Everything looked like the same stupid bit of land there was a split second ago. Couldn't this van go any faster? They had been driving for what must have been hours! The long summer day still did not want to close and bring lower temperatures, so she was stuck with staring out of the window, which was not exactly the most inspiring thing she had ever done. So. Duuuuuuuull.

Dull dull dully dull dull. Duuuuuuuull dull duuuuuuuuull. Dull dull du- **BANG!**

The crash interrupted her mental reverie and she jolted back into reality. Vriska, eloquent as usual cried, "Holy shit!"

"C'était quoi, ça?" the French girl asked, automatically speaking in her native language.

"Did wwe hit somethin'?"

And with that, the air conditioning switched off to accompany the dying splutters of the engine, before it stopped altogether, leaving a slightly eerie silence in its wake. Sollux looked up, briefly, before deciding it was not as interesting as his iPhone.

"Don't get up!" The female guard who had given the purple-bloods their water commanded the young mutants before heading outside. Something interesting had happened outside, but because of her status, Vriska was not allowed to see… this pissed her off, to put it mildly.

Before the mutation, due to her cerulean coloured blood she was able to get what she wanted a lot of the time. Most of the higher up blood castes did not live in her district, so she had a fairly advantageous position in terms of children willing to do her schoolwork for her, and give her their lunches. She was a blue blood in a sea of lower castes. There was not much they could do against the school bully. Heck, even the headmaster was a mere teal blood, so even she could do little to influence Spidermum and her daughter's terrible behaviour. It was when Vriska met Terezi, however, that she changed, if only a little. Having a friend that refused to put up with her shit was good for her, and she was beginning to change her actions. She had even met a nice guy on holiday, some geek called John, but the email address she gave him was never followed through, never contacted. This had happened just before the 'locked down in a basement' incident, and all the progress Terezi had made on her was removed in favour of bitter anger at this John Egbert. What a douche.

So it was because of this that she unbelted her seatbelt and strode down the centre aisle of the minibus towards the door, fully expecting that if she threw her weight around enough they would let her have her way. Of course, all this did was earn her the ceramic pair of handcuffs back onto her wrists and ankles.

"You kind a' asked for that really, Wriska." Eridan mused from the row of seats beside her, looking teeth-grindingly smug.

"Haven't you got anywhere better to shove that steaming pile of bullshit? And could you at least try to say my name right?" The scarf-clad mutant narrowed his eyes. Vriska knew full well that she could not defend herself well all tied up, but it was irresistible. "Come on, lets say it together. Vuh rihs kah. Now add them up, and we get Vriska! Can you do that fish-boy?"

Before he had a chance to injure her, Feferi grabbed a chunk of his scarf and held him back, muttering in his ear, "When you respond, it makes you just as bad as her." A grumpy Feferi was the last thing he wanted, so he remained in his seat, having to do with sending her dirty looks every now and again. "Excuse me?"

A younger guard poked his head up at the mutant's call before walking over. Perhaps he was a fan of hers? "Yes?"

"I was wondering… could you maybe tell us what just happened? Did we hit something?"

"Oh, we hit a wild dog, and this pile of sh- uh, minibus is so old it'll take any excuse to break down."

"But don't you have those high-tech vans for transport?" the purple-blooded girl enquired. Now she had spotted a kink in the 'no-info' armour, she was going to ask questions, small ones at first, and then gradually more helpful ones. "Like the ones we rode in to get to the aeroplane?"

"They wouldn't really fit you all in…" Realising what she was doing, he closed up. "We should be experiencing a delay of no more than half an hour. Someone is fixing the engines as we speak."

"Thank you!" Feferi fixed a sugary-sweet smile upon him, making his face turn a slightly green colour with the blood rushing to his cheeks.

Sure enough, quarter of an hour later, the air-conditioning switched back on, and they resumed their journey another few minutes after that.

The first signs they saw of their new home was a distant white glint as the sun reflected off glass. The closer they get, the better they could see it. After seven minutes, Aradia, for she had the best vision of the five of them, saw a cluster of modern glass buildings, all looking a bright blue, nearly blending into the environment surrounding them. Another half hour, and they arrived at the extensive electric fencing surrounding the compound. Vriska, upon seeing a flash of green fabric on part of the fence, announced to the group that she had seen a half-eaten body, seared by the electricity while they were trying to escape and was now in the process of being picked apart by vultures.

"Yeah, because wwe're going to buy that."

"But it's true! You're just too much of a scaredy-cat to believe it. Wuss-puss."

"Are you seriously likenin' me to a cat?"

The cuffs on Vriska's feet were removed, but those on her hands left on just in case she tried to escape once more or stick her nose where it was not wanted.

"Don't bother trying to run off kiddies. You saw how isolated we are here. There's no where to run to, and no one to run to, so you may as well stay here where you'll get food and water." the guard aimed the last part of the sentence at the purple-bloods, this one seemingly not intimidated by their caste in the slightest. "Make an orderly file the best you can, and we'll get moving."

Like a wall, the heat of the New Mexican wilderness slammed into Vriska, and instantly she could feel little beads of sweat beginning to form on the tip of her nose. If she was not this particularly unattractive shade of grey, she would have thought 'Great, I can get a killer tan from all this sunlight'. Then remembering the remaining bands of normal skin on her arms, shuffled the dressing gown she held slightly in order to catch as much sun as possible. Ugh, this heat was getting intolerable. Ah well, she would simply have to learn to cope.


	3. What a bunch of lame

A certain dusty look clung to all of the buildings, not to mention the air. With each gulp of air it felt like she was inhaling a mixture of fine dirt and water, but the one good point was that the sun had begun to sink back down below the distant mountains, taking the heat of the day with it. What residents there were already were shuffling back to their dorms as far as she could gather, the time around nine 'o' clock at night. Most kept their heads down, looking broken and completely subdued. Vriska saw this as a personal challenge against her attitude, and was about to comment on this when she remembered the handcuffs. Right. It was probably best not to irritate her handlers any more today. Even Vriska had limits… sometimes…

"We've gotten over twenty new mutants recently, all budding, all around your age. But we do not have room for so many. So eventually you will be separated into groups of twelve, separated again to two groups of six, and then into threes. You will stay in these groups of six for sleeping arrangements, the quarter groups for most of the day, and meet all together for eating. We will split you into your groups of three once you are all collected together," one of the guards said, shading his eyes with a hand. "Judging by that dust cloud in the distance, the final members of the thirty will be arriving shortly."

"Should we wait for them, sir?" another guard asked him, clearly a subordinate despite the obvious difference in blood caste. A blue blood taking orders from a green? It was as if they had been transported to the beginning of the twenty first century.

"Yeah, may as well."

So they stood in the sun for another five minutes until the dust cloud reached them… not to mention the bus. Vriska could not have cared less who else was in her team… unless they were potential materiel for manipulation. But by the looks of it -through the dirty bus windows that is- none screamed out at her. They were simply more of the same grey-skinned and scared looking teenagers… although with these, it seemed that not all were completely grey. Unlike with Vriska, and her companions, these children had not been hidden away and allowed to turn completely grey before being removed. As soon as they had begun to turn, they were given in, suggesting fear at the mutation that was greater than the love and care of their guardians.

Like the minibus Vriska and the others came in on, this vehicle was filthy, old and practically falling apart. The door creaked open, and the four walked off the bus. First off was a smallish boy with messy dark hair and a scowl deep enough to make all those who looked on him wonder if they had done something to personally offend him; his skin almost completely grey, save for thick bands on his face. He was shortly followed by an incredibly lax looking young man who stared about him as if the world had done him a favour bringing him here, in stark contrast to the boy before. Like Vriska, the Australian too donned only pyjamas, although unfortunately for him, or perhaps fortunately in this sun, he wore only the bottoms, showing the world the splotches of tanned skin left on his torso, and making the girl exiting behind him blush a soft jade-green. This girl, a Russian, wore her hair in a fashionably short style, sticking up in elegant twists. Other than her blushing, there was a very mature, grown-up sense to her by the way she carried herself, and, as Vriska would later find out, spoke. The final member off the bus, a Hispanic boy, had thin, near delicate features, with tufty hair and shy eyes that never held contact with others for more than two seconds at most. Unlike the others, his skin was almost completely normal still, showing a deep, mostly uninterrupted tan. This also meant that the raised lumps seen on most of the others heads were barely visible on his. Vriska chuckled. He was in for a lot of shit the coming months.

Equally sweaty and reeking of 'I need a bath', the Hispanic and Russian mutants both had the decency to look a little sheepish. The other two apparently did not care either way, although with only his trouser bottoms on, the Australian may well have been cool enough. Wringing the top of a bag with, what she assumed to be his item inside, the shy-boy looked around him with fear in his eyes. Clearly the place, and separation from his family, had terrified him. Aradia noticed this immediately, and lay a comforting hand on his arm, making him a flinch a little.

"Do not worry. It will be all okay… wait, it will all be okay. Sorry," she smiled, realising that her English had been grammatically incorrect.

"Thanks."

"My name is Aradia. Et toi?"

"I'm Tavros."

"Ah! I see you are rust-blood as well. Et bien, we will have to, euh, look out for each other, yes?"

"Sure. But, uh, no… never mind." he began, and then changed his mind about what he was about to say. His voice had a hesitant sense to it, as if he was scared that what he would say would earn him a cuff to the back of the head.

From behind her, Eridan demanded, "Wwell, are we goin' to go in or not?" Yet she was unsure as to whom he was asking this to. If he was following Vriska's shining example at trying to order around the guards, he would soon end up as poorly as she did no doubt.

They were told to get into pairs to walk in, and Vriska found herself with Sollux, oddly enough without the iPhone obscuring his vision. Apparently, this situation was important enough to warrant it's putting away. No small talk was attempted, they both knew that they were not to get along, and the English mutant was busy taking in the scenery as they were marched towards a large set of doors. Lucky to be with someone she knew, Feferi chattered nervously to her purple-blooded friend, one hand resting cautiously on the crook of his arm for comfort, the other fiddling with the sides of her goggles. Far in front, the tall Russian strode next to head guard, asking only questions that he could answer, since most topics were restricted. There were currently nine in their group now, and so there were going to be three more mutants waiting on the inside for them, not counting the twenty or so they had seen outside, soaking the sun up like it was their last chance.

Inside, the buildings had the same modern, near-futuristic look to them. Fake-wood laminate lined the floors, with the walls a warm off-white, which gave the sense that whomever ran this was trying to make it seem homely. The rather disturbing paintings by Geiger distracted from this feeling, however, and left even Vriska a little shell-shocked. He really was not the best artist to have in a detention centre for mutants, it merely served to drive home the fact that they were oddities amongst humans. Still though, they could look like the strange creatures in his artwork, so it could be a lot worse. Vriska noted the fact that Tavros, the tufted-haired kid, did not like to look at the paintings. She would have to find a way to use that against him some time, although she should get all the amusement she wanted from Eridan alone… provided Feferi did not step in again.

The first room they entered was where they were to get their items from home checked. Even after the analysis by the doctors before sending, some children had evidently been known to smuggle in 'dangerous' items, and so they had to be scanned just in case. The centre was not there to kill the mutants; it was there to detain them, and no more, unless they were a danger to both others and themselves… at least that's what their parents had been told at any rate.

"I need you all to remain in line, and bring the item you brought with you to the member of staff on your side. They will pass it through a scanner to check for any unexpected items. Before anyone complains, this is for your own safety. We had a member, before we checked, that brought in a knife, and killed four people, three of these mutants."

First up was the Russian girl, who had a picture book, which Vriska assumed was her favourite as a child. Still, it was an odd thing to bring. At first, the procedure went fine… But, oh, something was wrong. The guard on her side began patting her body down, and wore a strongly disappointed look as they found various sewing materials on her. Spools of thread concealed in pockets and the needle disguised on the inside of a hairgrip. From where she was stood, she could just about pick up 'Couldn't pick just one, huh, sister?' from the Australian. She looked pretty embarrassed with herself, and shuffled off after the woman who patted her down, presumably for a full body search. Never before had Vriska been so temped to yell 'BOMB!' and screw everything up, watching the panic ensue. The chaos would be akin to that which would occur if the same word was said in an airport. Well… maybe not _that_ bad. But fun enough anyway.

Next were the polar opposites. The laid back Aussie, and the constantly irritated Californian, of which neither brought an item, it seemed. Odd. Then, by an even odder turn of events, preceded by much muttering, the Australian announced, "Wait, the book's mine. I was kinda embarrassed about it, so she offered to take it in for me. Fucking miracle that it got this far, I expected it would fall apart."

"Hmm. You're the one with the weird dietary requirements, aren't you?" the guard asked, which was replied to with a casual nod. His eyes narrowed, probably working it out through his head and wondering if what the mutant had said was true. Well, as far as he could tell he was making it up to save the Russian's ass, but it was not going to harm anyone. "Whatever, bring the girl back in."

Wearing just a large square of fabric, she walked back in, looking visibly shaken. The sewing kit was placed into her hand, and the picture book, a Dr Seuss by the looks of it, was given to the overly lax boy. She looked like she was about to protest, the book must have meant a lot, but was silenced by a sly wink. "I've got this, sister." In all fairness, he was handling it like an ancient artefact. It seemed to be in good hands.

"Might I maybe acquire some clothes once more?" the jade-blooded mutant asked, slowly, clearly, as if worried that her accent would get in the way of peoples understanding of her. "Because not only is it immensely humiliating to be seen in such inadequate clothing, but despite the warm temperatures outside, it is chilly in here."

"The next room is where you will be receiving your uniform, so there's little point." head-guard dismissed casually. The Russian flushed an angry green, but there was little she could do.

Once the guards were distracted with the next pair, Feferi's goggles and Eridan's immense scarf, she turned to the Australian, this being the first chance she had to speak to him; the mutants had not been allowed to talk to the others on either the plane nor bus. "Although I doubt they believe your little ruse, thank you. You saved me from further… searching," Her face turned a shade greener… somehow. "I am Kanaya. I would shake your hand, however, both of mine are needed to remain somewhat modest," She looked down at herself, and then added, "Well, as modest as one can be in only a sheet."

"I'm Gamzee." he smiled, although by the looks of it, he did little else.

"Well, Mr Gamzee. As I'm sure you are aware of, that book is precious to me. Please look after it with much care."

When it came to the pair before Vriska and Sollux, a certain Aradia and Tavros, she was eager to see what they had brought with them. The French girl had brought a illustrated guide to archaeology, another childhood book, and the shy-boy, after being ordered to remove it from the bag, revealed a sweet cuddly toy of what appeared to be a large headed bull with fairy wings of all things. After a loud snort of laughter from Vriska amongst others, he flushed a deep orange-brown colour and pushed it back into the bag immediately.

"Ignore them." Aradia muttered to him as it was passed through the scanner. It came out clear, and he went to stand by Kanaya and Gamzee, waiting for Aradia to be done.

Gamzee turned to the crabby boy, Karkat, and asked, "Hey, why didn't you have an item, bro? I actually had one, but left it on the plane."

"Well, I _did_ have an item, but they took it off because of some-" the irritated boy began, holding true to his facial expression before the Australian covered his mouth with a hand, only contributing to the crabbiness.

With a slow smile, he said, "I didn't ask for a motherfucking shit storm."

His smile became a little sheepish when one of the guards gave him a look that clearly indicated, 'Clean up your disgusting language.'

Sollux's iPhone was passed under a scanner that scrambled up its use as a communication device. Obviously, they could not have their inmates communicating with the outside world. It simply would not do. But Vriska had a sneaking suspicion that Sollux was hiding something. Finally, it was her turn, yet something was amiss, as the person checking her dice could not decide if a set counted as one item, or multiple ones. The guard stood for a while, pondering the fact, before she began to shake her head.

"I think you'll only be able to take one. It'll be easier to carry at any rate." But just as she was about to take the other seven dice, Vriska looked her directly in the eye and concentrated, something in her mind was telling her to. It was the oddest sensation.

"I think that you'll find I'm allowed all of these. You cannot simply have one dice, you need a set. Like you can't just have one tooth." Vriska spoke slow and clear, similar to Kanaya's pattern of speech, except without the accent.

"Hmm… I don't know…"

Vriska focused even harder, softly commanding, "Yes. You do know, and the answer is yes."

"Oh… okay. And can I check your glasses briefly? I just need to check that they are prescription." Not wanting to cause too much suspicion at what she had just done, and in a partial state of shock that it had actually somehow _worked_ , she slid her glasses off and passed them to guard.

She had once been self-conscious about the massive glasses, and still was to a degree, yet after she had come home crying to Spidermum for what seemed to be the fourth time that week, she decided to take matters into her own hands and taught her daughter some life-lessons. Next time Vriska was teased at school, it was the bullies who went home crying.

Without the glasses, Vriska could see near nothing, and the glasses had to be placed directly in her hand before she could find them without resorting to random groping of the area in front. It was mainly the disgust at having to rely so much on them that brought about her dislike of the glasses, especially now that she was here. If she lost them, then she may as well be blind, and could become an easy target for the others. That was not going to happen. She could not, _would_ not become the bullied little six year old once more. Others would have gone about befriending as many as they could, forming a gang of sorts for protection. For Vriska, such an option did not even cross her mind for a second. Hers was to become the dominant mutant, the alpha, and make sure that they all knew just how badass she could be, that if they messed with her, bad things would happen.

The group of nine were now all done, and so they moved to the next room where they would be receiving their outfits. They were to strip to their underwear for the measurements and were then given the clothes. For Vriska, who had deemed it unnecessary to wear a bra since she was only thirteen, and as such completely flat chested (not to mention in her pyjamas), she got to keep her t-shirt on. And as for poor Kanaya, she had to wrap the sheet around her like a sort of strapless dress, and be measured that way. Like the mutants they had seen outside, they were given a grey-green overall to wear on top, covered will all manner of useful pockets with long, warm sleeves. Underneath that went a black vest, with a pair of knee-length, fairly snug shorts, and, of course, undies. Boxers for the boys, with pants and a bra for the girls, although none really needed the bra yet except Feferi, who, blushing, took it and went to get changed. It was probably a pre-emptive measure so that they would not have to hand them out later on, which would undoubtedly be more embarrassing. Finally, they each got a pair of knee-high boots made of a thick, synthetic leather.

Once they were all changed, with a last look at her favourite pyjamas and dressing gown, Vriska and the rest of the nine filed into the large lift in the next room. An industrial steel-silver, there were no mirrors inside to give the illusion of space. It was big enough to begin with, although the strange gouges on the walls spoke different stories… there must have been too many in here… with knives…? Oh shit. But maybe that ominous lime-green stain was just paint, right? Because, in all honesty, this lift really did need a change in colour… Okay, so there was something wrong with the scene, it was just that Vriska did not want to admit it to herself.

The guards were slowly being filtered off as they got deeper into the facility, presumably because they had not identified the children as a danger to the head-honcho of guards… or maybe there was less of a danger to the mutants themselves. Admittedly, many people did believe that the best way to deal with the increasing number of grey-skinned mutants would be to simply kill them off, preventing their genes re-entering the gene pool.

With a cheery 'ding!' the elevator stopped, and they filed off in their pairs once more, Vriska fingering the box of dice in her pocket. Since they had begun their decent down into the facility, Sollux was back on his iPhone once more, typing out what looked to be a load of… and then he moved it away from Vriska's sight, preventing her from knowing what it was. Clearly, he was incredibly secretive about whatever he was doing, because he then proceeded to put it away in one of his many zip-up pockets on his side furthest from her.

"Yeth, it ith because I don't trust you." he muttered, pushing his weird glasses up his nose. Well, Vriska decided, at least he was being honest. Although seeing as he had put the phone away whenever they began walking down new areas of the room, he may well have just been saying it to annoy her.

"How did you even get those glasses through? They don't look even remotely prescription." she pestered. The glasses in question were an odd pair of shades, the lens over his left eye: blue, that over his right: red. Where did you even get glasses like that in the first place? In response, he shrugged, not rising to what he assumed to be her bait. In actual fact, she was genuinely curious.

They were greeted by the next three that would join them. A petite Arabic-British girl, Nepeta as she announced excitedly to the larger group, whom was stood next to a tall, muscular boy with a soft Scottish accent, Equius, with much of his pale skin still showing. Vriska guessed that, like Eridan and Feferi, they too were lucky enough to know each other before hand. She then noticed the girl stood next to them, and gave a cry of disbelief.

"What are you doing here, spider-bitch?" The red-glasses clad girl asked, a grin on her face.

"Same to you, shit-for-brains. I was wondering where you were, thought you'd chickened out on all our raids."

"Hehehe, as if! I've been here for almost a week now, waiting for your group to turn up so we can get this thing on the road," Her oriental features were twisted into a sneer as she cast her gaze over the group. "Well… I guess they will have to do. We've still got this guy at any rate," She motioned towards Equius, who was currently looking sweatier than the rest of them combined… somehow. "Apparently he dented the van that they brought him here in. Hope I'm in his group."

"He did! I was in it! It was pretty scary, if I'm honest," Nepeta piped in, her voice containing a Scottish lilt to it as well. "But I knew he wouldn't hit me, so it was fine."

The Scotsman had the guts to look a little embarrassed behind his glasses, but said nothing. Thinking back to the van that she had been taken away in, Vriska remembered that there had been several dents and scrapes on the inside. Perhaps this Equius fellow did them… it was not as if there were vast swathes of mutants like them, so it was possible.

"Now then," the head-guard said once they were all together. "Since you've all been acquainted, we shall split you into the four teams you shall be working in for the next week or so. We have tried to take certain factors into account, but as we know little about you, they may well not be ideal," He sat them down on rows of benches, and stood before them, arms crossed in an intimidating fashion, and yet with sadness hidden deep within his eyes. For most of the children, they did not pick it up, yet for Kanaya and Tavros, the most empathetic of the group, it was more accessible, and it scared them of what was to come next. He called up a list of their names from the computer in the room, which were split into the groups. "There are another six groups before yours. So. Group seven: Equius Zahhak, Aradia Megido and Nepeta Leijon."

Equius, seemingly confused at how there would be no high bloods to boss him around cast an almost dirty look at the low-blood and went to sit. Nepeta greeted her cheerfully, knowing a little French herself, although it was clear that Aradia would have to be using her limited English for the majority of the time with her team. Damn.

"Group eight: Vriska Serket, Sollux Captor and Tavros Nitram." Vriska could barely believe her bad luck! What use would they be in a fight? A boy who still cuddled stuffed toys at night, and a geek? Ugh. They were as good as dead. Luck really owed her a favour.

"Group nine: Karkat Vantas, Terezi Pyrope and Gamzee Makara." A similar reaction came from Terezi who, sighing, realised she would have to in charge of their team. Yet when she voiced this, the grumpy kid, Karkat, created a shit-storm about how he should be the leader because he was 'obviously the best choice' and 'have you even done something like this before ever?' Not as stubborn as this Karkat, or indeed Vriska, she conceded and labelled him as childish both mentally and vocally. Gamzee merely watched on in amusement.

"Group ten, Feferi Peixes, Eridan Ampora and Kanaya Maryam." That was interesting. Clumping the two highest blood with that of the second rarest type… Vriska was a little disappointed. It certainly would have been interesting to be in the team with Eridan, but there would be a high chance that one would beat the other up into a comatose state. They sat in their group towards the back, Kanaya introducing herself to the high-bloods. Feferi excitedly demanded if Gamzee was her boyfriend, due to his taking of her book in what she deemed was a very gentlemanly act. This left Kanaya to awkwardly explain how she tended to be a bit more into the other gender, but not to worry as neither of them were her 'type'.

Now sorted and sitting in their groups, the head-guard closed the files he was reading about each mutant, and turned to face them again. "Are you done talking now?" he said in a sarcastic tone, waiting for them to be silent. "As you may well have noticed when mutants first began to appear, they are not well liked by the majority of the populous. Heck, it took a long time to get even this set up. But because of your… unique needs, we have very little room for your kind, and with increasing numbers of you arriving we have less and less space. We are expanding our base, but not fast enough. There are thirty of you competing for twelve spaces, and we decided that the best way for us to judge who gets them is for us to run a… competition of sorts.

'These groups you are in will be your family of sorts. If one of you goes down in the tests, then you will all fail, so you must look after and look out for each other, or you're as good as dead. We do not want mutants who are willing to betray their companions for our base," He spoke the last sentence slowly, and it seemed to Vriska that his gaze lingered on her as he said it. Well! She would have to show him that his assumptions were (mainly) false by getting group eight through. No matter what. She refused to be disallowed access to survival simply due to her group's inadequacy at self-defence. Besides, if everything else was lame, at least she was in the eighth group. Eight was a good number, so that would at least have to count for something. Continuing with the speech, "You will be released into the part of our base where we test you. It's a large area composed of a sort of… artificial village."

"You have thpace for an entire village down there, but not more thpace to accommodate all of us? That'th a load of bull."

"Listen boy, this was not my choice. So stop being such a smart Alec, and listen," the guard snapped, then taking a moment to compose his emotions into a more neutral state. With the push of a button, a projector in the ceiling switched on and a map of the underground village appeared on the wall behind him, his body becoming part of the screen until he moved away. "This is the layout of the village. There is space for over three thousand residents, to give you an idea of the size, and there are weapons concealed throughout the area for use."

It suddenly hit Eridan what the man was suggesting. "Wwait, so wwe are supposed to _kill_ the others?"

"Yes. That is the idea," the guard sighed, and then continued. "Although there have been groups that have gotten through simply by hiding the entire time. It would be a good idea to have some sort of decision on what weapon you would like to use, yet there is also a good chance that you won't get it. So be prepared to use something that you may have no clue about. My suggestion for getting through this is to find a well-hidden place to hide, stock up on food and wait it out. There are some violent kids on the other team, so be prepared to fight, stock up on long range weapons if needed and take shifts sleeping. Don't light fires, they will be able to see the smoke, and try to get along with your team-mates. Shooting each other will only end in tears.

'This choosing process can take anything from a few days to a few months depending on the budding mutants."

The worry in Tavros's eyes grew as he looked at his team-mates… he was a pathetic fighter, being a pacifist and he knew that they were likely to get fed up of him fairly quickly. Ugh, where was self-confidence when he needed it? Just looking at Vriska, he knew he was in for a long and painful week in the village… if they even lasted a week that is. Once you become the bullied, one gets an inbuilt radar of sorts for spotting bullies, and his radar was near short circuiting around this girl. Remembering the advice he had been told countless times 'If you don't give the bullies a reaction, they'll get bored and leave you alone' It was easier said than done, but probably necessary with his current group.

"You will now be separated into different rooms as to discuss your tactics. You will have ten minutes and will then be moved into the village." Before they were moved, Sollux turned just in time to catch a small, sad smile on Aradia's face. When she noticed him, she made it look a little braver, which he returned with his own goofy grin before he even realised it. Damn, what even was that?

The rooms they were separated into were plain with white walls and a plastic floor. Three chairs sat innocently inside, forming a loose circle, which they obviously had to adhere to. The three members of group eight sat in this circle, none bothering to rebel and move the chairs; they were too shell shocked for that. Despite Vriska putting up this big show and dance about being a huge bitch, it was all a barrier to protect her from the bullying again. In reality, she hadn't a clue at how to fire a gun, or stab someone. What thirteen year old does? Sollux was in only a slightly better state. His father, a vast man with a personality that changed at the flip of a coin, was prone to coming home very aggressive after drinking, not to mention his friends, so the boy was used to holing up in his room and waiting out the anger. Sometimes having to fight back even before he could hide. As for Tavros, he had very little experience of such violence. His parents had adored their son, slathering him with approval and love from the start. In any other scenario, it would have been great, save for the bullying he received at school for being a 'dirty foreigner immigrant' that was 'stealing all their jobs' due to his Latin American ancestry. Ironic really that both his parents were born in the US, not to mention himself. Although, it was not as if these bullies were logical.

"You do realithe that thith ith just to get rid of all the weak oneth of uth?" Sollux commented suddenly, making the other two mutants in the room jump.

Confused, Tavros asked, "What do you, uh, mean?"

"He means that they're killing off all of us that are weak or are disloyal. That's the point of the whole 'don't kill the people in your team'. It's not exactly a new thing, having fight each other for that," Vriska found her voice again, and fully utilised it. "Hey! Maybe they're making a sort of post-apocalypse army of mutants!" Now she had gotten started of one of her favourite topics, an odd excitement found its way into her voice, making her seem younger, less bitchy. "And imagine if we start developing super powers or something, and then they start hybridising us into some kind of super weapon for the US to wage war on all the other countries! It's not like relations have been very good recently…" She then realised the other two members of her team were looking at her with unconcealed curiosity. Well, it was no surprise really, it wasn't as if she let of a particularly enthusiastic attitude most of the time. She blushed a pale blue. "Well, anyway. Tactics! We need to get started, because frankly, you don't look like fighting material."

"And you do?" Sollux raised an eyebrow at the slight girl in front of him.

"I mean, I'm out of shape now, I was locked in a basement for months," She paused, taking in their curious expressions once more, and then giving them a look that indicated nothing would be said on the matter. "Anyway, what I'm getting at is that I know how to fight. I've taken judo classes for years now."

"Don't act tho superior. Have you ever actually been in a fight with someone older than you? A seriouth fight? Not jutht a controlled one at a club. In real life, they may have a knife, or a gun. They won't play nice." Although his words were serious, his tone did not change much from the usual.

"Well… not much older. But, they were kinda serious."

"And you… you don't look like you could thquash a fly…" he said to Tavros who, indeed, didn't.

"So what you're saying, is that our best hopes of survival is to hide and wait it out?"

"Yeth."

"Then that's what we'll do. If we pick a house, fairly near by where we're dropped, not too far away, because that's where they'll be looking, and not too close… for obvious reasons. It shouldn't be two stories if possible, otherwise if we get trapped upstairs we may have to jump from a window or something stupid."

Sollux nodded, "Tho if we do, we'll have to find one with a roof or thomething near by. Something we could thlide down for part of the way."

Sitting and listening was really all that Tavros could do. He hadn't a clue about such tactics, having never really thought about these things before, so could contribute nothing. He had never needed to sneak out of his house, of hide from his parents, or worry that the druggies downstairs could turn nasty and kill him in his sleep just for fun.

"We couldn't cook the food, as the smell of it could attract people. Same goes for anything smelly… unless… oh gross," Vriska wrinkled her nose in distaste at the idea that just crossed her mind. "We could possibly ward them off by having loads of disgusting smells in the general area where we are."

"Yeah, but if thith ith an artificial village, then there won't be loadth of rubbish around or open sewage or anything. If anything, bad smellth would be suspiciouth."

"Shit."

"No. That'th exactly what we won't be doing."

"Oh very funny, Thollux," she mimicked, throwing an incredibly sarcastic smile at him, which he ignored. "Hey, Tavros. Got anything to say, or are you just going to sit there like a lemon for a bit longer?"

"Uh, sit like a lemon, I guess," he replied. "I'm not going to, uh, be much help here.

"Oh, don't worry about it. We could tell." Vriska smiled viscously, and carried on talking to Sollux. "Our main problem is gonna be escape routes and weapons. If we find a kitchen with a good stock of knives, then that should do us. As for escape… a garden with a fence would be better, since we can't hurdle over a hedge really."

"And what if one of uth getth injured? We won't be able to hurdle over it then."

"We'll have to pass them over to someone on the other side then, I guess. But we'll think about that if it happens. Which, by the way, it won't."

Sollux shrugged, "All I'm thaying ith that we should be prepared for the worst."

"Of course," she nodded. "And obviously, if possible we should get loads of tinned food. Especially stuff that isn't gross."

"Hey, wasn't there, uh, someone with a special diet?" Tavros said all of a sudden. "Because I've heard that there are some, uh, indigo-blooded people who have to eat special diets, because otherwise they go on some kind of, um, killing spree…"

They stared at the orange-blood for a few seconds, concerned at what he had just said. Neither had heard of such a thing before, so it would not be put high up their concern list, but even so…

"Where did you hear thith?"

"J-just, uhh, rumours I heard," He shrunk back into his chair a little, grinning nervously as usual and stuttering at the sudden attention of his group. "I mean, uh, they may not be true. Uh, just thought I'd throw it out there."

The other two members of his group paused for a few seconds, thinking. The decided that since there was a good chance that what he'd heard on the grape vine could well be false, there would be little use in taking it into their calculations. While they continued speaking, he focused his attention on one of the grey splotches on his arm, which had been spreading at a fairly alarming rate. Although it was good to be surrounded by others with not only the same condition, but were also further along with it. Save for the bands on Vriska's arms, which he glimpsed while she was being measured (at this thought pattern, he blushed), neither of the other members of group eight had any of their original skin colour. Well, at least he would not die like his next door neighbour had suggested while jeering. He clutched the stuffed toy's bag tighter, hoping it would ease the homesickness he was feeling. It did, if only marginally.

"That's ten minutes up. Come back in," the head-guard announced from an unseen speaker inside the room. The mutant children filed into the main room once more, now looking slightly weary of one another after their plots. There was a good chance that many had created specific plans to take out the other members… or rather the more bloodthirsty of them. Others, like Feferi, were horrified by the very thought that they would have to harm their friends, and Kanaya was concerned that if she took out Gamzee, she may well lose her favourite book…

They were each given a small rucksack to put their items in. "You will be lowered into the village, and from there, will have ten minutes to hide or find weapons and food. If anyone kills another in this time, then they themselves will automatically be disqualified, and they and their team, killed. A little rough handling to get the best resources is almost recommended though." A small grin lit his face. "Well, I haven't got much more to say on the matter. Good luck."

Vriska gave a bitter laugh at his comment. Luck was something she had not had in a while. They were moved into another lift, fell for a few seconds as it sped downwards, then arrived. It opened out into the middle of a rural southern USA village, then once they were all out, the lift ascended upwards, leaving no way for them to escape. Also in this square, were the rest of the budding mutants, many still without much grey on them, and others, like Sollux, completely grey.

"The ten minutes to hide and find weapons begins in five…"

One of the other mutants glowered at Vriska.

"Four…"

Tavros tied the drawstrings of his plushie bag securely shut, before putting it inside his rucksack, and throwing it on.

"Three…"

Sollux patted the pocket with his iPhone in, checking it was secure and still there.

"Two…"

Although he would later deny it, Eridan reached for Feferi's hand, grasping it tightly.

"One…"

Kanaya's eyes flickered upwards for a split second.

"Go."

* * *

Your name is Tavros Nitram.

You are known to be heavily arrested by FAIRY TALES AND FANTASY STORIES. You also have a love for the MANY CREATURES OF EARTH. They are all your friends as well as warriors, except not warriors in real life.

You also enjoy playing a variety of CARD AND ROLE PLAYING GAMES. You like to engage in the noble practice of SLAM POETRY, possibly the freshest art form in your local area… okay, not really. You have a profound fascination with the concept of FLIGHT, and all lore surrounding the topic. You believe in FAIRIES, even though they AREN'T REAL.

You noticed a spot of GREY on your arm a while ago, which you tried to conceal with LONG SLEEVES. But wearing long sleeves in SUMMER led people to believe you had been CUTTING, and so your FREAKISH GREY SKIN was discovered. You were then FORCEFULLY REMOVED from your home.

Lousy goddamn stupid radiation.


	4. Nice jousting dagger

uddenly, the mutants were dunked into madness. Everywhere around Vriska flickered grey skin, green jumpsuits, flashes of angry yellow eyes. People pushed and shoved past each other, trying to knock their opponents out before they could find their planned hiding place, or take the weapon they wanted. One such group began to charge towards Group Eight, which Vriska put a stop to by punching the leader in the nose, then chopping the side of her hand at his neck, Sollux taking out the two on either side, protecting their weaker team-mate. Around the square were the weapons, either lying innocently on the floor, or stuck into the ground. Beyond that were the different streets with their houses, where a good deal of the mutants were already heading towards. Fools. There would be no food or weapons there, only shelter. Without an ounce of pity, Vriska thought, ' _May as well have a freaking shoot me sign on their foreheads_.'

The blue-blood quickly cast her eyes over the area, and then, they began to run, Tavros finding his hand enclosed in Vriska's rough, albeit warm, palm. But before he could hope for any friendship from this, Vriska spat, "Don't read into this or expect sloppy make-outs to come or anything. I just don't want to lose you then have you killed, because losing this contest would be shit."

"Oh, uh-" Whatever he was about to say was lost when Vriska suddenly yanked him towards where a large, vicious looking knife sat, embedded a couple of inches into the soil. Before the other child running towards them had the chance, she yanked it from the earth and cut them a lovely new scar on their cheek. As they fell to the ground on account of shock, Tavros reminded, "We're, uh, not supposed to kill them until at least ten minutes in."

"Psh. As if a cut that small could kill them! Although she did look like a weakling," the girl snorted, brandishing the kitchen knife in her right hand, with Tavros now in her left. She now set her sights on the mock-up village shop up a steep hill to their right. "Come on. We need to get food if we don't want to rot after the first day. Unless, of course, you want to fail like the other shit-for-brains who went that way." Not that she really gave them a choice, dragging the timid boy with her wherever she went, and Sollux following. Other mutants began to follow her lead, yet before they got close, she jabbed the knife in their direction, tripping a few of them up when they were not fazed by her empty knife threats. Needless to say, Tavros was glad she was on his side… kind of. For those who looked hard enough, they would realise that Vriska could not actually kill them with the knife, quite aside from the fact that she would be disqualified if she did, she currently did not have it in her to murder.

The cobbled road was awkward to run up, the terrain awkward under their shoes and resulting in each member of Group Eight almost falling many times. As soon as they reached the shop and they were all in, Sollux slightly delayed by a group after Vriska's knife, the blue-blood barricaded the door the best she could. Sollux, seeing that much of the produce was fresh vegetables and meat, said, "Canned or dried food only. Thith could last a while. And I don't want to deal with any tapewormth from uncooked meat."

Each opening their bags, they began shoving all kinds of tinned produce into their bags. A good deal of the tins in Vriska's pack were sweet corn, something which she knew tasted acceptable cold from experience. After a good few of these, she descended upon foods rich in vitamin C, not wanting to get scurvy like the pirates of her stories. A couple of jars of sauerkraut ought to take care of that. Now, what about carbohydrates?

They only stopped when another team, Group Three by the war cry they gave, came down from where they had been hiding upstairs. She doubted they would give such cries when the ten minutes were up… unless they wanted to be shot in their stupid, lame skulls. Instructing the others to carry on, Vriska began to work on them. From their energised cries, they really were fairly dumb. For a start they had thought hiding in the shop with all the food would be a good idea, and did not even think to close the door properly! What idiot would do that? With a couple of well-placed kicks, the first member went down, the fact that they were trapped in a stairwell making beating her all the more tragically easy. She locked eyes with the second member, a fairly large boy with blond hair that had the dark roots showing. He leapt down towards her, his weight knocking her to the ground, causing her to body to smack hard on the carpeted floor. And as if that were not enough, he then kicked her in the mouth, splitting her lip open and making her bite a deep incision into her tongue. She let out a quick gasp of pain, before Tavros dragged her back out of the way, Sollux hitting the boy in the stomach, winding him, then delivering a swift kick to the ribs as he fell to the floor.

As he dealt with the final member of their team, Tavros propped her up against one of the shelves, giving her a once over. "Are you okay? How, uhh, how are you feeling?"

Spitting blue down the front of her jumpsuit, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, smudging more of her blood across her face. "Gee, I don't know. Shitty? Why don't you freaking tell me, doctor?" Using her sleeve, she wiped her face down, quickly removing the tears forming at the corners of her eyes. "Freaking shit. Ow. My back hurts…"

"Could be worthe." Sollux commented, now done with the members of Group Three and rubbing part of his arm. The final mutant in Group Three had a mean throwing arm on him, chucking a can of asparagus at Sollux before he delivered the final blow. Piling the unconscious group in the corner, they set to finishing filling their packs. To his dismay, with his cuddly toy in the bag, Tavros could not put as much in his rucksack, so he made sure to pack useful items such as medicines and a torch or two to make up for it. He knew the blue-blooded mutant would not be pleased with this in the slightest, or the yellow-blood probably. He was on the verge of muttering an angry curse at Tinkerbull, but could not bring himself to. When they could only just lift their bags, they decided it was enough, and decided upon leaving the shop through the back door, which led out to a small garden surrounded by tall fences. No sooner had Vriska popped her head out the door, a bullet embedded itself in the wall right next to her ear, accompanied by a lock of her hair dropping softly to the ground.

" _Bitch_!" she yelled before shutting the door firmly and pushing her glasses firmly higher up her face. "Crap. The ten-minute mark must have gone while we were busy with these douchebags." As if to make her point more valid, she kicked the boy who knocked her to the ground.

"Don't kick them when they're down. They're already knocked out, that'th just low."

"Since when did you care about honour and shit?" she scowled, but stopped none the less. "Whatever."

"We're, uh, going to be pretty slow with all this stuff," Tavros said, referring to the food in their bags. "We're going to be easy targets at, uh, at this rate."

"Yeah, well we're gonna have to cope. We can't afford to let any of this go, or we'll die," Vriska snapped. "Anyway, you have the lightest load, thanks to your toy thing, so stop complaining, weakling."

"Vrithka, thut up for a thecond." Sollux muttered, and indeed, she was so confused that someone of a lower caste than her had told her to be quiet, that she was silent long enough to gather what he was doing.

Another side effect of this weirdly systematic mutation, was that the mutants ears would grow, the tip becoming more pointed over time, then lengthening another two, three inches, until giving the impression of… well… furless wallaby ears? Hairless donkey ears? Bluh, it was a hard comparison to find. Vriska and her little sister, before she herself had contracted the mutations (or rather, before the signs had begun to show), found a picture of a mutant, and tried to decide what the weird ears looked most like. It had taken an afternoon and a large encyclopaedia of the world's animals, from before the war of course, as half went extinct during that time, to figure it out. The closest comparison they could find was the ears of an aardvark. Now she herself had a pair of these, she realised they were not exactly alike, but it was the best comparison she could find still. Yet one comparison that was spot on, is that they worked similar to that of a bat's, funnelling the sound around her and enhancing her hearing. As a result, she could just about hear the small scratching noise from the floor above them.

Tavros, who had very few of the typical mutant signs yet, did not have the ears, so remained silent, straining to hear it, and still failing.

"We should try the front door instead." Vriska decided after hearing the weird shuffling, whispering the words as silently as possible. All of the strange Giger art was messing with her mind, making her imagine the creepy monsters in his art as being the source of the noise upstairs. From Sollux's pale face, or as pale as a grey face can get, she guessed that he too was thinking along those lines. Perhaps that was their purpose; to freak out the child-mutants. Tavros went along with their idea, deciding that if what he could not hear was making his team-mates unsettled, then he probably did not want to hear it.

Unblocking the doorway, they snuck out the front way, pleased to find that whomever was shooting at them from the back entrance would not see them this way. Good. But, damn, they really should have found shelter before the ten-minute mark. And more weapons. Sure, the knife was a good tool, but it would be little use in a gunfight. Only the fool brings a knife to a gunfight.

"Shit, what were we doing? How did getting a load of bloody food take ten freaking minutes?" Vriska then closed her eyes as she swore exactly eight times for luck, counting as she went. "Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit."

Then, as they paused by a hedge for shelter, took out her dice and rolled them on the floor. A high score meant high luck; a low score meant low luck. Eight dice, and eight sides. A total of sixty-four.

42.

Damn, now that bloody song from 'A Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy' was in her head… stupid dolphins. But forty-two was okay, she guessed. Sixty-five percent luck. Could be better, but could be worse. ' _And it could be more worse than more better… so overall, okay luck_.'

Packing them away again, ignoring the curious looks of Sollux and Tavros, she scanned the surrounding area for anything that could be of potential use to them.

"What's this?" From behind her, Tavros found a particularly tiny jousting lance. It had the handle and odd conical shape, but was under half a metre long, striped red and yellow. A jousting _dagger_? Either way, it was not what she had in mind with the sentence 'of potential use to them'.

"That is the most useless device I have ever seen in my thirteen years of existence… almost fourteen coming to think of it." the blue-blood sighed, flicking her hair back away from her face like some mock shampoo advert. But nonetheless, the orange-blooded boy took it with him, ignoring her words. Somewhere above them, they could hear the 'cha- _chick_ ' of a shotgun. It was time to move.

The next stage of their journey involved finding shelter. A house, single storey, would be ideal, but, heck, they would settle for a shed right about now. As long as they were no longer in the open, it would be heaven. Skirting along the bottom of hedgerows, they stepped near silently, making sure not to tip-off anyone with sensitive hearing, which was only… pretty much everyone here. There were a few close shaves, including a time where they encountered the vast Equius, who seemed quite happy to pummel them unconscious… or worse. But Aradia, upon seeing Sollux and Tavros lay a hand on his arm, and to their surprise he let them go, muttering something about rust-bloods under his breath as Aradia gave them a small smile. She whispered, "Rust-bloods have to stay together, no?" And then, out of the Scotsman's earshot, added, "Do not worry about him, he is, euh, well… he is not so bad, voila."

They seriously doubted her words, but nevertheless Tavros gave her a grateful smile before they moved on once more.

As they crept onwards, Vriska hissed, "You realise that if we don't fight any teams with people we know in, that it's just gonna leave us with all those freaky psychos to fight?"

"I theriouthly doubt that you could actually kill someone."

"That's besides the point."

"There's, uh, a pretty good chance that they'll all kill each other… that is, if they are as, uh, bloodthirsty as we have been led to believe." Tavros speculated, his trademark nervous grin plastered on his face.

"That'th a good point."

"Yes, but if we just sit on our metaphorical haunches doing nothing, there's a good chance that _everyone_ will do shit all, and this 'contest' bull will go on for ages. We've got enough food with us for about two to three weeks maximum. And that's if we do some serious rationing," she paused, pushing her hair back from her eyes. "I, for one, do not want to die."

"That wath not thomeone thaying 'I have a death-wish', that wath them thaying 'I don't want to become a math murderer'."

"A _math_ murderer?" she teased. "Ha, yeah, I go around murdering maths."

"My point remainth valid," Sollux remained as stoic as ever, fixing her with what she imagined was a steady gaze from behind his glasses. "Anyway, I feel we thould perhapth focuth on thomething other than childith digth at eachother. We haven't got time for all thith bull. We need thomewhere to hide before it geth even darker."

Looking towards the artificial sky, it was indeed getting darker. While where was no sun to speak of, whatever it was making light was sinking low on the fake horizon line. The village was a life-sized model of a rural settlement nearby the base… nearby as in over a hundred kilometres away. It meant that there was a similar dry look to everything; the grass, the buildings and the earth for starters. Not that anyone would be stupid enough to run out into the open wilderness seemingly surrounding the village, but if one did, you would find that there is a strange feeling that works its way deep into your bones, and the further one walks into this, the more painful this buzzing gets. That alone killed a mutant in the first ten minutes, along with the rest of Group Six as a result of his fear. Although Group Eight were not to know this.

Having not drunk anything since the milk on the plane, Vriska was thirsty. Thirsty as in 'I would drink the weird vinegar stuff they use to pickle sauerkraut' thirsty. Yet they could not stop, so she would have to wait until they reached a house and hope there was a water supply. The thirst needed to be quenched.

The first house they came across with all but one of their boxes ticked seemed to be perfect. After sneaking in and finding plush carpets, warm rooms and comfortable beds, they were ready to fall asleep there and then… that is until Group Two revealed themselves. Apparently their tactic had been to ambush people as they came in by the dart that buried itself into Sollux's chest. Quick as a flash, Vriska slashed her knife forwards, cutting a deep notch into the bone of one of it's members and then thrusting the end of its handle between the eyes of another, knocking them out. The last member, seeing that she probably needed to attend to her teammates, lest one could well die, backed off, leaving Group Eight to leave the house. The 'unoccupied' box of their tick list was one of the more important points, really, and there was little point taking over their house; they would only come back for it later on.

No sooner than they had left the porch, Sollux suddenly slumped forwards, Vriska catching him just in time. Falling on the hard stone patio could have caused him serious damage, which was exactly what she did not want. The vast amounts of tins he was carrying made it hard to hold him up though.

"What's wrong with him?" Tavros asked while they lay him out on the floor. She felt for his pulse, finding it to be alarmingly low. They then both gave him a scan with their eyes, trying to find the root of his unconsciousness. There were no easily visible signs… then the orange-blood spotted the pink feathers of the dart in Sollux's chest. "Shit."

"What?" Vriska still had not found the cause of Sollux's condition, prompting Tavros to point it out to her. Once seen, she reached forwards, planning to pull it from him, but he soon intercepted her, pushing her arm away.

"Don't move him anymore than, uh, necessary."

"Yeah, but the full dosage may not have gone in yet. I'll try not to jostle him or anything, but if we don't get that out now, we could be in for much worse shit than we already are." After a period of thought, Tavros conceded, but by this point, the dart had already been pulled out, Vriska not waiting for the low-bloods approval.

"Do you, uh, think that the girl in there has the antidote?"

"Hmm. Stay here," she ordered, and stood, rushing back into the house where the last, conscious member of Group Two was standing, putting a dressing on the mutant that Vriska had cut. Using all her will power not to hit her, she instead injected all the venom she could into her next words, "Who shot the dart?"

* * *

**== > Be the Russian chick**

You are now Kanaya Maryam

To Kanaya's delight, she encountered upon a chainsaw on the mad rush Group Ten took to shelt-

**== > No, the other Russian girl**

You are now Feferi Peixes

An arc of yellow blood spurted through the air as Kanaya swung the chainsaw, the large mutant whom had previously been charging towards them stopping as his hand fell to the ground with a dull thud.

" _The hell, bitch_?" he screamed.

"Now kindly leave." The boy did not need to be told twice and he turned-tail, speeding off while cradling his injured arm, pressing the stump against the fabric of his boiler suit to try and stop the bleeding. So far, it was not doing much.

"I t-think just waving the thing in his face would have scared him off, honestly." Feferi stammered as Kanaya switched the tool off, making a mental note to not irritate the other Russian girl, lest her hands get sawn off.

"As well as given him the opportunity to think we are easily won over," Kanaya paused to think of the correct wording, and then added, "If we do not follow through on our threats, then other teams will begin to imagine that we are pushovers and will kill us. However I apologise that you had to see that."

"Wwell… it wwas necessary. Noww lock the gate. Wwe don't wwant the rest a' their group gettin' in."

Kanaya shot an irritated look at the boy, but nonetheless shut and then locked the large gate. Bloody celebrities. Instantly, it began buzzing as strong currents of electricity passed though it. Not enough to kill someone, but enough to prevent people from trying to scale it without getting some serious pain coursing through their body. The same went for the rolls of barbed wire at the top of the three metre tall walls.

They headed towards the building and picked up their pace, worried that someone could see them and decide to take a shot. Shelter for them was now a triple story mansion on the outskirts. At the very top of the house was an observatory of sorts, made from a large dome of bulletproof glass, with a series of small windows at eye-level. The gardens surrounding it were vast and composed almost entirely of lawns. This was the best house in the village for safety, and they had only found it because of a small package being slipped into the palm of the Russian high-blood. Once their group was put into the separated room, they opened it, finding a small map, a heavy iron key and a thin card key for the gate. It turned out that they could not allow Feferi to come to harm, as well as anyone lucky enough to be on her team.

It was hardly fair, but as long as she and Eridan survived this, heck, she was not about to complain. He was the closest thing to family she had, and had looked out for her since the day that they had found each other. She often reminisced about that day, but right now was not the time; they had work to do.

The first thing they noticed as the door to their temporary home swung open were the stairs. They stretched up one tier, and then branched out left and right, flanked by two rows of rooms for god knows what. At the far end of these twin corridors, they met again, with another staircase reaching up towards the second floor. Finally, in the centre of this floor was a spiral staircase reaching up into the observatory via a trapdoor. Making sure that she locked the door behind her, Feferi soon set her mind on how they could use this. They should be safe enough to simply wander around the house, thanks to the electric fence. But she was not willing to take that risk, not if her adoptive brother and new-found (kind of) friend would be put in harms way because of it.

"Find as much food as possible and take it to the second floor. And Eridan, give me your Arab's Cross-stitch or whatever it's called." she commanded, swapping her double-ended trident for Eridan's oversized gun, then began to head upwards, opposite to the other two going to where they suspected the kitchen to be. At their confused looks, she explained, "I just need to test something."

"But Fef, you hate goin' places on your owwn." Eridan said, concerned.

"Hey, I'm thirteen and a half, almost. It's about time I grew up." she grinned. "Come on grumpy-gills. Get to work!" She took a moment to enjoy Eridan's expression at her pet name for him, and then jogged up the first set of stairs, finding herself out of breath already. She muttered to herself, "Man, I need to do more exercise. Note to self: survive, then go to the gym."

She did not care what her purple-blooded friend said in the contrary, she was chubby and she knew it. Sure, it was not _that_ bad, but bad enough that she understood she needed to exercise more. Although secretly, she hoped his claims of 'Even if you wwere fat, it would be puppy-fat which would only contribute to your height as you groww up.' were true. Hehe, he was far too sweet sometimes… she wondered why no one else noticed. Although that ridiculous gun they found earlier seemed to bring out this new side to him which she had not previously seen.

When she finally reached the second floor, she searched for the stairs to the observatory, and found them in plain sight. Well, that was nice!

Lifting the trapdoor, she hoisted the huge gun under one arm, fired it at the glass dome then let the door slam shut, running back down the spiral staircase to safety. TO her surprise, the only thing destroyed when she went back inside was the amateur telescope. Hmm. That probably would have been useful. But, glub! The dome could not even be destroyed by the most powerful weapon she had seen yet. This would be their base of operations. Yes.

"Fef, wwhat the fuck wwas that noise?" Eridan said, appearing from behind her. Evidently, like most normal people, when he heard the loud noise from upstairs, which was where Feferi had been heading, he rushed upstairs. He was shortly followed by Kanaya, who unlike Eridan, had her backpack filled with food. It seemed that at the noise, Eridan had dropped all and ran upstairs, while sensible Kanaya took the food with her, just in case they needed to hole themselves up somewhere for a week while they came up with a plan.

"Wash your mouth out! I was just testing this dome to see if it was bulletproof." she snapped, irritated at his potty mouth. Ever since he had been introduced to the internet, his language had just been getting fouler and fouler. It was pretty annoying, in Feferi's opinion. They had a duty, as high-bloods, to be elegant and so on. F-ing and blinding all over the place was not the way to go about this.

"Oh… an' wwas it?"

"Whale, look for yourself."

They all clambered into the domed observatory, and from there gazed out across the village. The sun had since set, leaving only a disk of white in the air as the moon took over. Everything took a silvery hue to it, and in the distance Eridan could just about see three people shuffle around in the darkness, two supporting one who could not stand as they tried to find a place to hide. He was suddenly very glad at their house.

"I recommend that we acquire more food and bedding materials, and reside in here for now. Venturing outside only to use the, ah, water closet."

There was certainly enough room inside for the three of them and a decent store of food, so they got to work, collecting food from the downstairs food stores, and bedding from the excessive number of bedrooms. Once that was done, Eridan set up the Ahab's Crosshairs, pointing the muzzle of the gun out one of the windows, aiming it at the vast lawns that made up the front garden.

First, they ate. All three were ravenous, but had to restrict themselves to one tin per day maximum. It was tough, but they would need to keep their food going for as long as possible. Feferi had also taken the liberty of bringing a large vase or two of water upstairs with her, after dunking her head in the water-filled sink. Her face fins felt great afterwards, and she recommended that Eridan did the same.

Eridan took the first watch and, feeling safe, Feferi playfully tweaked his cheek before sinking into a light, dreamless sleep.

* * *

**== > Be the spider bitch**

You are now Vriska Serket

"Who shot it?" Vriska demanded as she rushed into the room with the member of Group Two inside. As soon as they noticed, the girls face paled, and the blue-blood could see that she had been crying.

"Shit! Please, leave us alone! I let you go, didn't I?"

"I said, who shot the fucking dart? Kindly tell me, or I'll have to ask again, and I'm not in the mood for repeating myself."

"What? I don't have a freaking idea!" Yet it was clear from her actions that she did, that she was waiting for the poison to finish killing Sollux so that the group with this insane girl in would just die already. A deep anger began to swell within her, and the strange instinct that had spoken to her when she was getting her die through, came once more.

Throwing her fingers to the sides of her head, Vriska stared the girl in the eyes, her voice containing a sudden lull, "Listen, I don't have time for this. Get me the antidote."

A starstruck look appeared in the eyes of the Group Two girl as she calmly got up and walked to the chest-of-drawers, pausing to pull it open and then took out a fine glass vial. Vriska broke off the control and snatched it from her hand before the girl had the chance to smash it, ensuring the death of Sollux. She still was not sure what this strange control she had over people was, but what she was certain of is that it would come in use. ' _Must be because of this freakish mutation business_.'

"Oi! Open his mouth!" she called as she ran out, pulling the cork from the bottle as she went.

Confused, Tavros asked, "Why?"

"For sloppy make-outs, obviously," she shot back, sarcasm lacing her words. "No, I've got the cure you idiot."

The tufty-haired boy's mouth opened and closed, fish-like for a few seconds as Vriska sighed and did the job herself. Pulling the limp body up into a sitting position leaning against her, she tilted Sollux's head back and poured the antidote in.

A couple of seconds later, and his heart rate was already picking up. Good. It would not do to lose on the first day.

"Uh, feeling better, Sollux?" Tavros asked when the boy's eyelids fluttered. He made a sort of non-committal grunt before slumping down, his head resting Vriska's lap. "I guess not?"

"Here, take one arm," They each took one of his arms over their shoulder and began to carry him to shelter. "You know, Sollux. I think the way that this generally works is that you make at least a bit of an effort to walk. You know?"

"Thhhh…"

"Ugh. Whatever."

With the night, came sleep, and so many of the groups had only their lookout awake. One person would not do much against a group three strong, so there was far less chance that they would be shot at. After another ten minutes of wandering, and Sollux's weird, delirious mutterings, they found a street that was unoccupied as far as they could tell. All of the houses were at least two stories high, but at that time they were not too fussed about such things. They swung Sollux onto one half of a double bed, pulling the covers up to his chin as he shivered.

"Bitch, you don't know how good you've got it." she muttered, before raising her voice so the tufty-haired kid could hear. "Hey, I'll take first shift, okay? I'll wake you in a couple of hours. Although without a projectile weapon, I'm not sure what I'll actually do."

Tavros nodded, and headed for the bed, avoiding the mounds of tins and jars scattered across the room. It was a bit weird sleeping next to Sollux, but as soon as his head hit the pillow all of that was forgotten, he just about managed, "Uh, goodnight." before he sank off into a deep sleep, joining his yellow-blooded companion. Although externally she rolled her eyes, on the inside, she was touched by his gesture… a little.

When she was certain he was asleep, under her breath, the girl whispered, "…goodnight."


	5. Unwanted visitor

The door to the house had been left unlocked, deemed unnecessary by the two conscious members of the group as they heaved their downed friend up the stairs. Moonlight, at such a time of the night, was more than enough to go by for someone with their vision, and so they padded softly up the plush, thick carpet; the colour a deep shade of crimson. At first, the intruder felt a small state of alarm at the slight creaks their ascent was making, but when the light snores coming from their target room did not change, they continued without fear.

As they approached the room, light splats could be heard dripping from their cargo. No, not yet; they needed that liquid for later. They eased the door to the bedroom open, and peered inside, making sure all were sound asleep.

Two were in the double bed, one silent, the other the source of the snoring. Another, stationed on a chair by the window, also slept; oblivious to the intruder he was supposed to be spotting. Stupid boy. He was lucky that the intruder was not on a mission to kill them… yet. Right now, they merely wanted to mess with them a bit. But just to be certain, they paused over the double bed, and kissed both children on the cheek, then over to the chair with the dozing sentry, and pecked their lips on his wet face, pausing a second to enjoy the salty taste. Ah, he shuddered, so he was not asleep. He was pretending so the intruder would go away. Silly boy. They waited for the boy to fall soundly asleep, then moved on. The group should not awaken for a while.

Once in the en-suite, they got to work, hammering as silently as mortally possible, while still going fairly quickly. It was not the matter of the sleeping team in the next room, but rather those of the other mutants who could hear the noise and come. They were the intruders only. No one else would get the privileges of their deaths.

Done. Now, for the finishing touch. They pulled a knife from their pocket and _SLIT…_

_Splatter._

* * *

**== > Wake up, Sollux**

Your mind feelth thluggish and weird, you ignore all promptth and remain athleep for another few hourth dethpite the horrendouth nightmareth courthing through your thkull

**== > Seriously, wake up, Sollux**

Urhg, not right now. You want at leatht five more minuteth of thleep

**== > GET UP BOY**

Sunlight streamed softly in through the windows of the bedroom, contrasting sharply with the heavy jabs of pain pulsing through Sollux's head. What had even happened last night? He had felt a sharp pain in chest when they broke into the house… and then felt dizzy… and passed out as they left again. That was it? Sollux frowned, keeping his eyes shut as he tried to remember, but to his avail, nothing more came… other than a blurred image of Vriska's face hovering over his…

Okay, basic information. Where was he? ' _In a bed… wow, okay, don't remember that…_ ' He cracked his eyes open a slit, only intensifying his headache with the light. ' _Oh god, why am I even alive_?'

At the stage of tired where nothing is particularly alarming, and the only thing that's important is more goddamn sleep, Sollux turned to his other side, and was greeted with Vriska's sleeping form; eyes closed and lightly breathing.

As strong surges of panic began rising in him, he hissed, "What the-"

"No we didn't sleep together or anything, doofas. We're thirteen, honestly," Vriska muttered, not bothering to open her eyes. It seemed that she had been awake for a while, merely waiting for a good excuse to actually move. Also, perhaps for his reaction at their sleeping arrangements. "You're fully dressed anyways."

"Oh… thath good to know I gueth."

"The Group Two lame-asses shot a poison dart at you, so being a pansy, you passed out," she explained, then to make the story more interesting, with a vicious smile, she lied, "You were frothing at the mouth and thrashing about and everything."

"Uh-huh."

Vriska sat up; throwing the blankets off and then began to search for her jumpsuit, having slept in just her vest and shorts. Her yellow-blooded companion was not so eager to wake, and remained curled up, feeling sorry for himself. It was expected, however, that he would be feeling pretty rough for the next few days, and Vriska had planned that Tavros and her would be taking most of the shifts for now. But as soon as his condition improved, he would have to make up for it with an all-nighter… wait that would probably be a stupid idea actually.

"Oh, you're up. That's good. How, uhh, how are you feeling?" Tavros turned to face them, greeting him with a smile, although there was a weary look to his eyes. The grey had spread a little more, with a patch beginning to form over one eye, making him appear almost like a cow. His eyes were kept politely averted from Vriska's form as she changed, although a light blush spread over his cheeks. Not that she really appreciated this.

"Jeez, man. It'th not like she'th naked or anything," Needless to say, Sollux's words did not exactly help the poor boy's blush to disappear. "But yeah, I'm feeling better thankth."

"When you're done discussing me naked, we will begin to eat. Wouldn't want to interrupt or anything," Vriska said, her usual sarcasm thick in her words. "Anyway, dibs on that tin of peaches. That'll be the best thing I've eaten in a good few months."

"Here." the orange-blood passed her the tin. She snatched it off him, offering no hope of a 'thank you', then as she paused to remove the lid, her face suddenly tightened into an expression of rage.

"Jesus! Stupid bloody idiots!" Despite her earlier claims at making sure they kept as much food as possible, not to mention the whole 'we must be quiet' speeches, she hurled the can at the wall, yelling obscenities as she went.

"Vrithka, for godth sake. Do you want everyone to know where we are?" Sollux hissed, on the verge of clasping his hand over her mouth, or knocking her out or just _something_ to make her silent. "Whath even your problem?"

"We forgot to bring a goddamn tin-opener with us! How are we even going to eat anything?" she whined. "Can't believe I was put in a group with such lame-arses."

"Yeah, it'th kinda your fault too. Don't act tho high and mighty."

"Well you should have reminded me! I'm mortal too."

"Uhh…"

"I'm just going to go, and check the house for intruders, and leave you guys to figure out a way to open these tins, otherwise I'm going to smack something." she muttered, holding her head like it was fit to burst and then grabbed the knife. Tavros then waved the tin-opener he had brought with him in the air, but she had already shut the door on them. They honestly pitied any poor human she would encounter on her round so very, very much.

"Think we thould lock her out and leave her to fend for herthelf." Sollux grinned, and honestly, they both considered it, sniggering at the thought.

"Wait, we too, would be killed if she, uh, gets beaten to a rather messy pulp."

"Thinking of that Equi-whatever guy?" The yellow-blood gave another cheeky smile. "Honethtly, I don't think I'd mind too much if he did beat her up a bit. She deserveth it."

"Well… maybe a _bit_ …I, I guess."

Using the tin-opener, they each grabbed a can of whatever was closest, and dug into their breakfast. Okay, so after the first mouthful of cold, tinned pasta, Tavros wished he had looked at what he was eating. Could be worse though; Sollux was eating corned-beef.

"Ugh," Yup, that definitely did not look appeasing in the slightest, vegetarianism aside. "Thith ith disgusting. Why did I even bring it?"

"We were fairly preoccupied with just getting, well, food. I, uh, don't think you're too blame. We were being a little rushed." Tavros gave a fairly un-manly giggle, his voice pitching up high again (oh the joys of your voice breaking!), then looked towards the door. The last thing he wanted was an angry Vriska on his case, because really, who did?

Luckily for him, it was once his comment was finished that the blue-blood burst in, kitchen-knife in hand. Upon witnessing their breakfast, she glowered, snatched up the tin-opener, and marched over to where the can she had previously hurled at the wall lay. Needless to say, their meal was a silent affair after that.

When they were done, Tavros said, "We need to figure out when we're, uh, going to eat."

"How so?" Vriska asked, her bad-temper slightly dampened with the tinned-peaches in her belly.

Her team mates guessed that she was not a morning person. It was correct. But in reality, the reason she had been particularly bitchy that morning, was that the tan bands on her arms were getting even thinner, and with that her final connections to who she once was, back when she was normal. Her eyes had changed, almost all of her skin had changed, she was getting some weird bumps on her head, and her canines had been lengthening, becoming sharper by the day. Just that morning she had bitten a hole right through her lower lip in frustration at the lack of tin-openers, making it bleed all over the front of her jumpsuit; but there was enough of her blood on it already so that neither Sollux nor Tavros noticed. She had left to clean it up in the kitchen sink, but was too proud to admit this. Well, if worst came to worst and it did not heal, she had gotten a great new piercing from it.

"Well, first, we have about fifty something tins, which, uh, is okay I guess. But between three of us, we can't have three a day, because, we'll run out. Quickly."

"Yeah… could you speed up? Your meandering is taking all day." Vriska sighed.

"Maybe, if you, uh, let me finish, it wouldn't take so long," he muttered, then continued, "If we each eat a tin in the morning, as to acquire energy for the daily routines, and then share one at night, that should, uh, make sure we don't use them all up."

It was a reasonable idea, and really, there was nothing wrong with it. Vriska pouted, wanting to poke holes in it, but there was little to do so to, so she conceded, scratching at the lumps on her head as they were being maddeningly itchy at the moment. Sollux merely pondered the matter.

"If thith goes on for a while longer, we may well have to go back to the shop. Won't we?"

"Uh, I guess so."

"We thould probably go back there thoon to get more food."

"Well duh, unless we go out there and actually beat the shit out of people like we're supposed to."

"Get over yourthelf," Sollux snapped, irritable at the early time he had to get up at… not that they really had a clue at the time. At least it was Tavros who was the morning person… he dreaded to think what would occur if it were Vriska. "The motht important thing ith that we thtay thtrong and eat. If we get too weak, then it'th more likely we will be 'owned' as they thay."

"Do you know what else is important? A freaking long range weapon. You're still recovering, so you can't fight… although it would make you less of a weakling I guess. And Tavros… hah!" she snorted at the thought of Tavros being even remotely threatening. "Yeah, he's not going to be protecting us in our sleep anytime soon. So I'm going to be defending you both, pretty much; and I can't exactly throw a kitchen knife at intruders can I?"

"Well you _could_ ," the geek pointed out, less interested in the conversation now, and back on the iPhone. Man, had he missed it. Away from it for one day, and it was already too long. "Tho. Are we just going to thit here until dark or thomething?"

"Sorry, but, uh, can I just ask. Did you say 'sit here until dark' or 'shit here until dark'? Because, uh, well, I can't really tell," Tavros tripped over his words so many times in an attempt to get the correct wording that Sollux spared him a grilling, and simply gave him a 'what do you think?' look. "Sitting, then, I guess."

They sat in a semi-comfortable silence for a while longer, Sollux typing, Tavros fiddling with a hangnail, and Vriska playing some weird game with her dice. After a couple of minutes of this, she sat up suddenly. "I'm going to the loo.

"Thankth for that mental image."

"You're welcome." she said, picking her knife up as she rose and left the room. The bathroom was an en-suite at the back of the master bedroom they were in, which was pretty convenient. Still making a face at Sollux, she slunk in and shut the door, before turning and facing what lay inside.

They sat in silence until Sollux asked, "Hey, Tavroth, how long ago did you thtart going grey?" At first the boy thought Sollux was referring to his hair and confused, raised a hand to his hairline. "No, I meant your thkin."

"Oh! Uh, several weeks ago I think, or, uh, maybe a few months or so. Sometime in August?"

"You've got a while to go then."

"Until what?"

Sollux merely tapped the side of his nose with a maddening grin that reeked of 'you'll find out'.

Casting a worried look towards the bathroom, Tavros said, "She's been in there a while."

"Not really."

Well, no, she had not. But that was merely a precursor to what he was about to say; on the strange noises he could hear coming from it. "And I can hear something… it sounds like she's crying."

The yellow-blood had his headphones in to block any noise coming from the bathroom; hell if he wanted to hear her on the loo. But upon taking them out, he could indeed hear her hitched breath ringing into the room.

"I dunno, maybe she'th just thtarted her periodth or thomething." he dismissed, making Tavros's nose crinkle at distaste.

"I think, maybe we should go and-"

"Come." Vriska's voice whispered, heard only by Sollux. "Come here. Come in now."

"Hmm?" Sollux called, "Why?"

"I did not say 'please grace me with your loquacious presence if you so wish', I said 'come'. Which means precisely that. So get your butts off the floor, and _come_." Her voice was stronger as the familiar irritation at her companions filled her veins.

Sighing, the yellow-blood heaved himself up from the floor, joined by Tavros, and walked over to the bathroom.

"Tho why do you want us? Only girlth like going to the bathroom at the thame time." They still had not gone in, respecting her privacy as the only girl.

"Shut up, get in here and look, lame-skull." They slowly opened the door and swung it wide open. Immediately Tavros's eyes went wide, traumatised by the sight of the blood. Vriska was pressed up against the wall next to the door, looking like a particularly terrified deer caught in headlights. The white, tiled floor of the bathoom was lined with a coating of vivid, red blood, pools of where it was particularly thick here and there, with strange, mutilated animals hanging from the ceiling; throats slit and strung up by the ankle. The strangest thing by far though, was the mark on the mirror: a ';) xx' drawn in blood.

Sollux's eyes widened behind his glasses… not that anyone could tell. "Thit." And this time, he did not mean 'sit'.

"You don't fucking say?" Vriska laughed, the terror inside leaking into her tone without realising it. Her breaths were irregular, strongly hitched and shallow as she tried to regain a hold over herself. She swallowed several times, although this did little help.

"A mutant. The animalth alone couldn't make thith much blood. But… we would have noticed them coming in. Thomeone wath awake the entire time... weren't they?"

Vriska then turned to the orange-blood, a strange combination of fear and anger on her face. "You fell asleep didn't you?"

"N-no! Well, I uh, didn't mean to… they, uhh, came in and-"

"You fell asleep while they were _in the fucking room_?" she was on the verge of screaming at him, the event having really scared her. " _I can't_ believe _you! How could you let this kind of shit happen_?"

"I-I tried to, uhh, stay awake but, um, they, well, did something to, uhh, us. I d-don't know!" The poor boy was on the verge of tears from fear at the scene before him and Vriska's anger. When the first orange-brown tinted tears began to drop, the girl grabbed him by the front of his overall and slapped him around each side of the face viciously with no signs of letting up.

" _We could have fucking died, shit-brain! All because you decided to take a nap on the freaking job_!" she shrieked. By this point, they were both in tears, the stress and terror getting to them both… not to mention the pain of slapping. " _How could you do that to us, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, IDIOT, IDIOT_!"

"Vrithka! Thtop it!" Sollux tried unsuccessfully to wrestle the girl off of Tavros, but unfortunately, Vriska really was as strong as she said… which was stronger than Sollux with his wiry, thin muscles, even without the poison he had just been cured of. Eventually he pried her off, stood in-between a pair of hysterical teenagers, one hell-bent of slapping the other into a stupor. Tavros gave the geek a hesitant smile as thanks, although it was not very good given the amount of assault his face had just received. But Sollux ignored it, sending him a disgusted look that clearly indicated he was not in much of a better mood with him.

"B-but, uhh, I couldn't help it-"

"Thave it for thomeone who giveth a fuck, Tavros."

Vriska picked her glasses up from the floor (they had fallen off in the scuffle), placed them upon the bridge of her nose once more, and marched out of the room, shortly followed by Sollux, leaving Tavros alone with the death and the blood…

* * *

**== > Gee, this is depressing… be the perky one**

You are now Nepeta Leijon

Currently, she was curled up tightly, asleep on the floor. She had fallen asleep there while fiddling with the stitching on her hat – the item from home she had brought with her – and Equius had left her there, pulling a blanket over her sleeping form.

Yawning, she woke, showing off her lion-esque canines, then stretched, making sure she was ready to get up and pounce on her companion without fear of getting cramp. He was stood by the window, looking utterly bored with their current situation, and it seemed he had not made any attempt at all to get along with Aradia. Honestly!

With a small growl of anticipation in her throat, Nepeta sprang at the boy, wrapping her thin arms around his neck. At this, he lost his balance and grabbed out at the curtains with a shout of surprise, which did little to stop his fall and served only to have them tear off the rails and cover them. Nepeta laughed from her perch atop the boys back with the curtains as a cloak, Equius sighing from his position face down on the floor. Evidently, this was by no means the first time she had done that.

Tinkling laughter came from the bed, where Aradia was sat, book forgotten in her lap at the sight of the serious high blood being downed by such a small girl. Nepeta could see the blood rushing to his face as he gently pushed her off, careful of his ridiculous strength, but still wanting to stand up again.

"Nepeta. Such actions are not befitting of someone with your blood." he scolded, frowning at her from behind the lenses of his weird, tiny glasses. Clearly heeding his words, she stuck out her tongue at him and placed her hat back upon her head, the buds on her head poking the fabric uncomfortably.

The next stage of the mutations was involved with the lumps on their heads. Nepeta was the first of their group to get to the second stage of 'budding' mutants, where the lumps began to grow taller like a young deer's antlers when they are in velvet. At the moment, hers had grown to the width of a tennis ball and were beginning to get a pointed end as they grew higher. The problem was… they had heard rumours of what they became, or rather what they were not allowed to become. Once the odd fuzzy-skin covering them came off, they would be… removed… they had heard the screams.

Aradia had been informed of the developments in the mutation, but it seemed she already knew. She had been the daughter of the head mutant-captor in Paris, and so knew full well that the officially released photo's of mutants were heavily photoshopped. Thus, she knew that soon, they would grow these… things… on their heads, and that The Retainment Organisation for Lucid Liathdaonna, or T.R.O.L.L as it was also known, would, in some cases, file or burn them off.

The Liathdaonna – meaning 'grey human in Irish – were the mutants, with 'lucid' referring to the fact that they were sane, as opposed to the 'lurid' mutants discovered that had completely lost their minds, destroying all those in sight. These often died fairly early on, killing both their mothers and themselves in the womb with their strange urges of violence and power. Many suspected that the indigo-blooded people that went insane might have genes related to the Lurid Liathdaonna. Either way they were slung into the boot of a van and carted off somewhere.

In fact, being the daughter of such a powerful member of T.R.O.L.L was part of the reason that Aradia had lasted so long. Like any half-decent parent, her mother had used her influence to hide her child as long as humanely possible, but eventually her colleagues had noticed her change in attitude towards capturing the young mutants, and so they raided her house, finding Aradia and removing her. But not before her mother saw the scabs and scars on the buds on her head, where she had tried to shave, cut and gouge them off. The last expression she saw on her maman's face was of sadness at her daughters removal, and the great disappointment at how she had failed as a mother, having driven her daughter to self mutilation so she would love her. What Aradia did not know is that shortly after her removal her mum was sentenced to death for harbouring mutants at such a high position in the trade.

"So... from this, I would say that we are now, euh, trolls? Is 'troll' the right word in English?" Aradia commented.

"Pawssibly." Nepeta giggled, amused at how they were 'trolls'. "Equius, you troll!"

"I would prefer it if you refrained from befouling her language with your odd notions, gutterblood." Equius said to Aradia in a low voice, yet his Scottish accent combined with her limited knowledge of English made it hard for her to understand his words.

"I am sorry, but could you, euh, could you repeat that?" she asked, but was met with a shake of the head before he went downstairs. Gah, high-bloods were silly. When he was out of earshot, she said to Nepeta, "How do you get… be friends with him? It is because of my blood, no?"

Nepeta wished she could have shaken her head in response to the last question, but it was true; Equius was a complete bitch when it came to blood castes… ugh. A rare, serious look passed over the young girl's face. "Unfurtunately, he's completely caught up with this stupid caste system. I've tried to get him away from it loads, but I can't. The best I can do is be there and show him that green's not so bad."

"But green is not red…" she sighed. Aradia was fairly frustrated at the boy, and despite her success at stopping him from killing Sollu- uh, Group Eight… she still was no closer at breaking the shell he had surrounded himself with. From what she could gather (although it was hard to gather stuff when the object of snooping was Equius), he just needed to see that there were no differences between them, despite their huge gap in the hemospectrum. Well, she would break him. And she would then make him a better person… in due time.

Nepeta looked at the determined smile her new-found friend wore, and was pleased. Equius needed some new friends, and the lower caste, the better.

You go girl. You go.

Anyway, Nepeta decided, it was now almost noon, and they had done little more than take catnaps and stare gloomily into the distance, that was dull dull McDull. Time to do something.

Once the other groups had seen what she liked to call 'mildly-irritated-Equius' after someone had laid a cheeky slap to Aradia's behind, and he had laid a cheeky slap to their face (they had flown backwards), no one had really bothered them. Sure, they could try and shoot him from afar, but image if they missed and he came after them! Shit, man. No one wanted that. No one. The closest they had come to conflict was when Group Eight had passed by when Equius was practicing his BATSHIT CRAZY STRONG fighting moves (beating the shit out with punches), which naturally enraged him. Luckily for them Aradia was in the vicinity… who knows what would have happened if not for that… his strength was bordering on ridiculous lately. If he did not stop getting stronger then something immensely bad was going to happen-

CRASH! "Aurgh!"

Christ's sake… speak of the devil.

Aradia frowned towards the direction of the stairs, "Shall I go?"

Again, a sombre look crossed Nepeta's face, "No. He may well pummel you by mistake. He would regret it later, no matter what he says."

She padded downstairs towards the direction of the loud noise, senses on high alert. Of course, what could have happened is that an intruder got in, but it was far more likely that- yes. Just as suspected. Equius was stood in the kitchen with the door to the fridge held in his hand. Oh no.

"What's happening to me…?" His voice sounded unusually weak, wearied as if the constant stresses of life were getting to him. "What's wrong with me… this never used to happen…"

"You just need to lay off the weights! It's purrfectly normal to get stronger than you realise after doing so much bodybuilding," Nepeta smiled, acting up the optimism to make everything seem normal. But it wasn't. He knew it, she knew it… god, even Aradia could tell something was wrong! "You just need to get used to it.

That was all a lie. Complete and utter bullshit. No. It most certainly was not normal to rip the door off the fridge just by opening it. Who were they even kidding? His strength was bordering on supernatural, and it was terrifying. And he did not even have the 'I-overdosed-on-steriods' look as an excuse being covered in lean muscle and most importantly, at the young age of thirteen. But they would continue to lie, because neither wanted to accept the truth. With physical mutation, comes… something else. Nepeta was at the end of her perky little girl tether, and Equius was ready to beat someone up, so in a rare moment of indulgence, they told Aradia they were going out, and left their shelter in search of something to destroy.

Fist kind. Claw kind. Hell yeah, something was going to die.

* * *

Your name is Sollux Captor.

You are apeshit bananas at computers, and you know ALL OF THE CODES. All of them. And though all your friends recognise your unparalleled achievements as a TOTALLY SICK HACKER, you feel like you could be better. It's one of a number of things you SORT OF BEAT YOURSELF UP ABOUT for NO VERY GOOD REASON during your sporadic BIPOLAR MOOD SWINGS. You have a penchant for BIFURCATION, in logic and in life.

Your mutant mind has been gifted with VISION TWOFOLD, which confuses you no end, so you confuse it back by wearing DUAL COLOURED GLASSES. It confuses you as well.

Your skin has been turning an ODD SHADE OF GREY recently. Knowing what SHIT this would undoubtedly bring, you HID IN YOUR ROOM and skived off school for SEVERAL MONTHS, forging home school papers. But eventually someone realised and you were REMOVED. Your father was TOO DRUNK TO RESIST.

Lousy goddamn stupid radiation.


	6. In which, things are broken

Muscles quivering, Equius leaned against the body of what was once a car. Honestly, it looked more like something one would find at the bottom of a rubbish heap now, than anything you could actually sit in. With nothing more than his fists, he had pummelled it into a messy submission, Nepeta helping with her strange retractable knives that made her look like Wolverine Lass or something. In several areas, the blood from his knuckles smudged blue smears over the once pristine, white paint. It was a waste of his noble blue-blood, but what the hell, it had felt great.

With a slight squelch, the game Nepeta had caught were placed on the remains of the bonnet. Equius had absolutely no idea from where she had caught it, or that there even were animals, but he did not mind. They had not thought of getting food, so anything to eat was a godsend. Aradia's stomach had been rumbling through out the first day and well into their second, although to his surprise, she had not complained once despite her low blood status. Odd.

"Ready to head back?" Nepeta asked, a silly grin on her face from the thrill of the hunt.

The girl's father had been a long time friend of Equius's dad, having been to university together, and so when both Mr Leijion and Ms Asar – her mother – were killed in the riots over food as police trying to control them, the care of a seven year old Nepeta fell to the Zahhak's. Any other relatives she had could not take her in, turning their blue-blooded noses up at the girl who had been born to a blue-blood father and yellow-blooded mother, and her mother's half having their own issues to deal with in the increasingly hotter United Arab Emirates. Thus, Equius and Nepeta were raised as siblings, looking out for each other in different ways, but with the same interest at heart. Nepeta kept tabs on his temper and attitude to 'gutterbloods', making sure that the snobbish high-bloods at their school did not turn him into a despicable human being, while Equius would look out for the naïve girl with the olive-blood, knowing full well that many looked down on her for her caste, as well as her Arabic heritage.

Occasionally she would fly into a rage at her treatment and run off into the Scottish wilderness with nothing more than a machete and her senses for protection against the mutated beasts that lay within. At first, the boy had been disgusted with his father for taking in a low blood, and a foreigner at that! Yet when she had taken off into the surrounding woods for the first time, he realised his mistake and sped off after her on the Zahhak's family horse. After hours of searching, he found her hidden in a small cave for shelter from the heavy rain, crude drawings of herself, Equius and the bullies at school scratched onto the rock. It showed her and her adoptive brother beating up the bullies, and although terribly cheesy and sentimental, Equius felt a surge of disgust at himself. From that day onwards, although they did not fight those cruel to Nepeta, they would run off into the forest together and let off their steam by screaming and running around like the children they were, or later on with their father, hunting the strange three-eyed deer and the like around. There was something satisfying about catching your own dinner.

In response to Nepeta's question on heading back to their shelter, Equius nodded. They had been a couple of hours now, so Aradia deserved at least knowing that they would be back. As before, no one dared try and hit the two members of Group Seven.

Aradia was waiting in their safe room, the door barricaded and locked as expected. She let them in with a smile on her face, although the hunger showed through the mask.

"We brought food!" Nepeta grinned as she waltzed in, fingers scratching madly at the lumps on her head. Ugh.

"Vraiment?" The French girl's excitement at something to eat leaked into her voice, and then she blushed. "Ah! Sorry, that was, euh, very rude of me."

"Purfectly fine, I'm starving too."

"Hey, are we okay to cook it? The, uh, guard man said we should not cook it because it makes smell, no? And, euh, the others would know where we… merde, c'est quoi cette mot? Ah! They would know where we are."

Nepeta frowned, "Hmm… oh yeah, I hadn't thought about that."

"I honestly doubt that there will be rival group members patrolling the area in search for smells to pursue," Equius contributed. "Furthermore, we need to consume something before we pass out from hunger. And we cannot eat the meat raw as we may get parasites from it."

So it was decided, and while Nepeta skinned and butchered the meat, separating out the juiciest fillets, Aradia worked on finding a frying pan to cook it in. It seemed that the hob worked just fine, and she soon found something to cook it in… however there were no food items, so no oil or spices to cook it in. The low-blood was well used to cooking for herself due to the late shifts her mother worked, and although her brother would often help out, he too had his own school-work due to applying for a scholarship for university so she could not rely on him.

"Well, this will not be the most best meal I have created, mais, it will have to do," she announced while placing the meat in the pan, still mixing the occasional French words into her speech. It sizzled violently even without oil, and she quickly had to back away for a second until it calmed slightly, or risk getting hot fat spat on her arms. "Bluh, sorry, my English is a bit poor today."

"Don't worry about it. It's better than my French!" the olive-blood giggled, handing her another slice of rabbit. "Can't wait to sink my teeth into this! I'm staaarving."

"Nepeta. Such language is-" Equius began, but Nepeta caught his phrase, completing it for him.

"Not befitting a lady of your caste, I know, I know," she pulled a face that was supposed to be like the tall boy's, and then grinned at Aradia, giving everyone another great look at her sharp teeth. "That looks about done now, surely?"

"Huh? Oh! Oui." the French girl snorted at herself, using a spatula to get the meat from the pan and placing it on a plate. Despite the lack of seasoning, it smelled delicious. But both Aradia and Equius were fairly certain that was only due to their hunger. They were particularly odd specimens that Nepeta had caught: a brace of rabbits with only four legs each, mad! Although allegedly, that was how animals looked before the war… not that any of them could remember such a time, the war being over thirty years ago, and they only fourteen at most.

Nepeta ate first, jabbing the muscled boy in the side when he tried to approach the available food. Watching while she cooked, Aradia could tell that Equius could easily take the food off her, but something stopped him. Despite all his airs and graces about blood castes, he was still great friends with an olive-blood… that had to count for something, surely? But then, any hopes she had were dashed as he took the next pieces and glared at her as she reached for them, daring her with his eyes to try and take them. Although externally, she only gave him a cool look, on the inside she spat, ' _Asshole_.'

What on earth did Nepeta see in him?

"Ah! I remembered. While you were out, I found some things."

Aradia, was about to head upstairs to fetch them when a low voice interrupted her, "You went outside without us?"

"Bien sur… how else would I have found them?" she frowned.

"You should not leave the house without one of us, lest you could get killed…" And then when he realised it sounded as if he had _affection_ for a _gutter-blood_ , he added hastily, "I, uh, mean, that would kill the rest of us as well."

A little touched by the almost concern he showed, Aradia smirked as she continued up the staircase, fetching the weapons she had found. While she was no Equius, she was certainly not a delicate flower either being a low-blood, having to fight for all the things that a high-blood got for nothing. A boy from Group Five approached her shortly after she had found her weapon of choice, less intimidated by her now Equius was not around. It seemed that his group was stationed at a reasonable distance from theirs, but once they saw Nepeta and Equius leaving, he decided to pay their house a little visit and caught her in the process of closing the door, the blue-blood waiting for her inside with an expanse of piping as a weapon. He cocked an eyebrow higher when he saw her, noticing that she too was younger than the rest of the mutants he had seen, as groups one to six were made up mainly of fifteen and sixteen year olds, the age groups clumped together they best they could.

Not noticing the whip she held in one hand, and the bow and quiver slung over the other, the boy had chuckled and raised the pipe higher. Aradia was suddenly not so sure of her choice in weapon. Sure, she could use it well, but it's not as if she could inflict much damage… unless… and then he had lunged at her, making her dance away quickly, a grin on her face. Just as she thought, the blue-blood had never had to fight a day in his life! This would be easy if all he was going to do was swing that pipe around. With a flick of the wrist, she had wrapped the end of the whip around the pipe and yanked it away from his grip. Grabbing onto it before he had a chance, quick as a flash, she smashed it around the back of his head, making him fall to the ground unconscious. From there she had dragged the boy out of the house and locked him in the shed, waiting for the other two to return before she could dispose of him.

But now they were back, she realised that she had yet to tell them of the boy in the shed and the weapons. Dang, how absent minded could she get? Rushing downstairs, she beckoned them over in the direction of the shed and motioned towards the window.

"So, I caught someone."

* * *

**== > Be the shy one**

You are now Tavros Nitram, and if you would be so kind, could you, uh, remember his name in the future?

Understandably, the rest of Group Eight had banned Tavros from the nightshift of keeping watch. They had ignored him for the rest of the day save for disgusted glances, and so he remained downstairs, clinging to Tinkerbull like a lifeline to prevent the tears that threatened to fall. No. He was stronger than this. It was not like this was the first time people had been disgusted by his presence, or that people had yelled at him for essentially existing. But, who was he kidding anyway? This was different. In the past, the bullying he received was focused on his differences: scrawny, midget, foreigner. Their cause for the abuse was completely plausible. He had screwed up. He had fallen asleep when someone who could quite easily have killed them was in the goddamn room!

What was wrong with him? He usually had difficulty getting to sleep, his overactive imagination getting the better of him before he managed to get much shut eye. But this time: the intruder came in, and soon after he was asleep. Something was wrong, and there was more to it than initially met the eye. He was sure of it.

Perhaps it was related to something he had noticed when Vriska had been getting the antidote for Sollux. When she had gone in, her voice had sounded angry at first, the girl whom she was getting the cure from terrified, and then as soon as Vriska had toned down the girl just… brought it to her. And then, as Vriska brought her hands away from her head, she grabbed the vial quickly as the girl looked like she was waking from a dream. Something was going on… and he would have to get to the bottom of it… somehow.

Tavros clutched Tinkerbull closer, burying his face into the soft fabric of his childhood toy. Even before the grey had begun to appear, he had been seeking comfort from the toy more and more as puberty struck. His classmates were getting to that age. The age of awkward feelings and wavy voices and growing taller… except he wasn't. He was staying irritatingly short, and it frustrated him no end, especially now when Sollux was so much taller than him… not to mention Vriska. And of course, eager to tease the 'foreigner', his classmates picked on him for this. As if he needed anymore ways to be a stupidly shy fool! Ugh.

He had found himself developing a crush on a girl in his class. A sweet girl by the name of Jade Harley, with straight, black hair, bright green eyes and slightly bucked teeth. But like hell did he care about the teeth, he saw her as perfect. And yet, it seemed he was doomed to remain in the dreaded 'friend-zone', as she remained oblivious to his (incredibly vague) advances. Oh well, even if he did grow another twenty centimetres, there would be no point; he was never going to see her again.

Creak!

The boys head swivelled around towards the source of the noise, and to his surprise saw Vriska. Speak, or rather think of the devil. She looked a little embarrassed at being caught in the act, betrayed by the smudge of blue across her cheeks, but offered no further explanation for why she was downstairs.

"Uh… what do you want?"

"Trying to look nonchalant, are we?" she smirked coldly, flicking her hair back from her face; her fringe had grown a crazy amount in the months of the basement confinement.

"W-well, uh…" He bit his lip, looking shy, but really trying to hold back the tears her words threatened to bring on with sharp pain. Anything could set him off at this point, he was ashamed to admit, but not in front of Vriska. He would not put himself through that. "No."

"Whatever. I need you to do a job for me… do you think you can do that?" Her smile turned sickeningly sweet in, what he assumed, was an ironic way… that or she was actually trying to _seduce_ him. Good lord. Even the thought of that made the poor boys face flush a deep orange-brown.

"Uh… it depends w-what." Ugh, he really needed to do something about his speech problems.

"I don't think you are in much of a position to enquire about that, don't you, Tavros?" That god-awful smile remained fixed on her face, her eyes glinting with malice behind the glasses. "No? Good. I was hoping you would go with that answer. Now then, we're going to set a trap!"

"Uh… how do you know how to set those up?"

"The internet… although you low bloods can't use it fully, can you?" she teased, leading him out of the front door into the fake sunlight. The brightness of it hurt his eyes, and he held a hand to his face, casting them in shadow. Tinkerbull was back in the rucksack, secure and safe. She fixed her dark-brown eyes upon his. "Now then, because of your… mistake… we now have someone wandering around who knows where we are. And so, we need to catch this jerk-bag. Okay?"

Tavros nodded.

"Good. Now," she inspected the area around the door, deciding what the best trap to lay would be. Eventually, thumb and forefinger cradling her chin, she gave a nod and turned to the boy. "Right. We need rope."

"Uh… rope?"

"Yes. Rope. Parlais-vous Anglais? It's what you use to tie things with. Actually, a length of wire would do, I guess. But it would have to be pretty long, or this won't work…" At Tavros's hesitance to go, she clicked her fingers. "Well, what are you waiting for? Too scared to go off on your own, am I right?" With another hesitant nod, Vriska laughed, "I am. God, you coward."

It was odd how quickly she had gotten over the fact that she had almost died. Perhaps she never believed it in the first place and just wanted to scream at someone. That was perfectly believable.

They spent a good half hour rummaging around the house and the surrounding garden, yet by the end of if, the most they had found was a short length of string. Frowning, Vriska then tore upstairs once more, grabbing a length of curtain from the bathroom and ripping it from the rail holding it up. Then, ignoring her team-mates looks, for Sollux had felt it necessary to join their hunt as the night approached, she began to tear the fabrics into narrow strips and plait it together, making a makeshift rope. Vriska then taught the other two how to weave a three piece plat, and set them up making more of the rope. After another half hour, they had a decent four metres of rope, with their pace quickening as the boys got the hang of plaiting, and the sun tumbled down the skyline, embodying their very urgent deadline. Set the traps, or die.

For a thirteen year old girl from England, where there were pretty much no animals that could pose a threat to someone's wellbeing, she made the traps ridiculously well. When asked, she merely smirked, "Fatal online role play. You don't know how good it is until you play it like a high-blood."

Tavros, an avid player of such games, gave a grin, "Can you actually connect _into_ the game?"

With a movement that appeared practiced, she lifted her mane of hair up, revealing a plastic disk embossed into the skin at the top of the neck. It was this disk that allowed all those above teal-blood to access the internet on a completely new level. On certain websites, and the count was increasing by the day, the user could immerse themselves into what they were doing. Whether it was checking emails, playing online games or browsing image results on google, you would appear in a dark space, floating, and all around, panels of light would appear before you were thrown into what you were doing. Of course, the process came with throw backs… mainly the port the computer would need to have to your brain to get such imagery. It was a tricky operation, with the first few to get it dying or receiving permanent brain damage. This alone almost got the practice banned, but the high-blooded idol Feferi Peixes got it done, and so others flocked to be just like her and the practice was fully inaugurated into the high-blood way of life. Another excuse to act superior to the low bloods. The process of getting into the internet was rather squeamish and awkward though.

"Could you, uh, maybe show me how you get in?" Tavros asked, awed by how he was talking to someone with the link.

Vriska flicked the hair back into place and replied, "Maybe later. It's not exactly what one would call a good time right now. It's like dreaming, and I don't want to be snoozing when the snooper comes in… unlike some."

And so they waited. And waited. And waited.

Traps on every opening to the house, be they simple rope traps intended to suspend the trapped upside-down in the air, or complicated ones involving the hurling of large rocks towards anyone who tried opening the windows. Despite her sudden nonchalant attitude towards the fiasco of the dead animals in the bathroom, the event had deeply scared Vriska. It was evident from her glances at areas in shadow every few seconds, to the way her hands trembled as she worked on the rope.

They put the finishing touches on their escape plan if needed while each eating a tin of food each. If they had to leave quickly, they may not be able to take all of the food with them, and so they made sure there was at least something to keep them going. All three had packs with a fair amount of food and a torch in, and in addition to that supplies from Tavros's backpack that they deemed necessary. Vriska had the first aid kit, ironically enough, and brandished her knife; Tavros's pack contained a large, thick blanket along with the remainder of the rope they had made and the jousting-dagger, wielded in his left hand; finally, Sollux had a decent sized bottle of water in his bag to accompany the food. They were poised for the mystery intruder, strung tight.

"I knew we should have left while we had the chance…" Vriska muttered as she stared at the red stain from the bathroom that had been seeping into the carpet all day, crossing the room towards her.

"We can't just leave… not with Sollux." Tavros reminded, seemingly trying to comfort her. Well, it worked, because he was absolutely right. While the geek could wander around the house, his movements were slow, lethargic, and akin to that of an old man's. Yet as the evening drew on, he grew stronger, his mutant cells healing faster than a regular human. He was a geek, but he was a strong geek with a bloody good immune system.

It was then when they heard the tapping of finger nails on the window, and all three pairs of eyes flicked instantly to the sole pane of glass in the room… nothing… which meant the intruder would be trying to get in downstairs…

Vriska began to swear under her breath, like a mantra, as she stared at the door. It was almost amusing how put out she was by this, so Sollux slowly stood up and checked their only escape route – the window. They had picked their room well, as under the large window was a sloping roof with a mere two metre drop. It was feasible, and their only option at the moment. Good.

 _CRASH_!

Glass smashed loudly, rock hurling forward eagerly as a window was slid open. The noise had come from downstairs, giving them about a minute at most for the intruder to get to their room, and perhaps another two minutes to get through the traps on the door and then… who knew. They had been odd enough last time to only threaten and shock them badly, but this time, the second night, it was a given that they were out for their blood.

"You really think a locked door will stop me?" they called up the stairs, their voice strange, androgynous. Perhaps the people at The Retainment Organisation for Lucid Liathdaonna were bored with the amount of time it was taking these children to kill each other, and were releasing genetically engineered monsters to get the job done quicker! Trust Vriska to think up something like that, they would later laugh.

Sollux nodded at the other two: it was time to leave. First out was the geek, soundlessly sliding their window open and hopping out, skidding down the roof before pausing at the end and dropping off the edge. Next up was Tavros, and padding towards the window, he stopped as a strange laughing noise echoed menacingly around the house. Anxious to be gone, Vriska motioned furiously at him to get a move on as the footsteps of the intruder got closer, and yet he still did not move, frozen to the spot by fear of not only the person coming towards them, but also the daunting drop that awaited them.

" _Move you baby_!" she hissed violently, and when he made no further movement, leapt towards him and pushed him out of the window.

It seemed to go in slow motion after that… he tumbled down the roof, a look of terror in his eyes before he met the end of the tiles, and dropped, hitting the hard stone patio back first… Vriska would never forget the scream of pure agony that followed. It sent shivers up her spine and her breath to hitch. That was not a scream for minor injuries…

Yet she did not have time for him as she herself finally leapt out the window, and landed neatly on her feet, sparing a moment to look back at where she had come from. Currently, it did not appear as if the intruder had gotten through into the bedroom yet. Good. Although with that scream, they would surely know that they had left the room…

Tavros lay on the stone flooring, sprawled out with orange tinted tears rushing down his face, and the noises… his breath hitched wildly as he struggled to take consistent inhalations, whimpering and trying to ignore the orange blood seeping into the fabric on his back.

"Tavros, come on, we need to get going." Vriska said, desperately assuming he was making a big fuss out of nothing. "Get up! We don't have time to lick our wounds."

Wincing, Tavros tried to sit up, only to have fear spread across his features, petrifying them.

"I-I c-can't feel m-my my…" His hand flew to his mouth as he gulped, breathing as deeply as possible to hold back further sobs. "Oh god… m-my legs… V-Vriska… I t-think…"

And then it clicked, although she hoped desperately it was only temporary. She called Sollux over, chucked Tavros's bag at him to carry, and then scooped up the boy in her arms bridal-style. ' _Lucky he's so tiny_.'

Vriska could feel the rust-coloured blood throbbing into her jumpsuit sleeves with every movement she made. And at every twist of her body as she ran to the best of her ability, Tavros moaned, the jostling of his back creating near unbearable pain… until pain and blood-loss reached such a limit that he blacked out in her arms. Good. That was probably best considering what she was about to do. The only way out of the garden (other than the booby-trapped gate) was a metre-and-a-half tall fence. Once Sollux was safely over, she passed her bag to him, and then Tavros's slumped form. Sollux cast her an alarmed look, but she had little time to register it as she vaulted over, scooping Tavros back up, along with her pack.

"What happened to him?" Sollux panted as they jogged. Thankfully he was well enough to get them a good head start on the intruder, or perhaps it was the adrenaline rush.

"He was being slow, so I pushed him out the window…"

"You puthed him?" the geek cried incredulously. "Are you thtupid?"

"I didn't think that would happen!" she cried, then remembered to keep her voice down as they fled. She was thankful for the cover of dark; no one could see her tears at what she had just done. No. Vriska did not cry. Never again, _ever_. Her eyes were just overly irritable at the cool air rushing into them. Yeah, that was it… disregarding the fact that she wore glasses. "Look. He'll be fine. We will all pull through, and win this bloody game."

"Is this just a game to you?" Sollux murmured, before turning quickly to avoid the glares of a group settling down for the night. Shit. Where were they going to go? That house alone had taken a lot of luck, and if they did not stop soon, again, bad things were going to happen. Honestly, Vriska thought, it seemed that one of the boys was always in trouble! Gosh.

They did not have any allies they could go to, nor another idea for a safe area. Unless of course, if Group Two had succumbed to their injuries and died, leaving the comfortable house free. Perhaps that would be the best option, but goddamn it, where even was that place? Okay, she admitted it, Vriska should have paid attention. But really, that first night, she was trying her best to keep Sollux breathing and find a place for them to hide in all fairness. And it had worked! At least for a bit…

Eventually, she found the old Group Two bungalow. Hesitantly, she looked in through the windows for any signs of life. There were large amounts of green blood on the floor… Vriska guessed that she had hit an artery when she cut the kids arm… had she… killed him? A deep pang of fear coursed through her, but she could not dwell on it. Not with an injured team mate. Not when Tavros was on his final legs (ha ha, Vriska). His blood made a dull splat as it dripped onto the stone beneath the window she was peering through. Well, she may as well _try_ going in. And so she did.

Creeping through the house, the blue-blood checked all the rooms, assisted by Sollux. With every step she took, Vriska expected a member of Group Two to leap out and surprise her, perhaps with a poison dart to her eye or something to keep it interesting. But there was nothing. Not in any of the rooms. Only the vivid green bloodstains that clung bitterly to the carpet. Oh god, oh god, oh god… she had killed someone. She had actually _killed_ someone.

Vriska sunk to her knees, the passed out Tavros heavy in her arms. Sensing an imminent freak out, Sollux set to locking the doors and windows, moving slowly once the adrenaline had worn off, and he was left with a weak, only just cured body. Still, shuffling around got it done, and hell, no one was about to come in at this time of night… other than their intruder.

The duo set to work on Tavros's back, pulling his boiler suit down to the waist, and sliding the vest off (thit, he'th whimpering in hith thleep whenever we move him) to get a good look at his injury. A shard of glass from the broken window the intruder had used to get in had gouged a deep slice into his back, hence all the blood. But they could not understand why that would remove his ability to walk… but then, he had landed on his back fairly hard.

"Fuck this, what have I done?" Vriska moaned.

"I think thath the last thing he wanth from you at the moment." Sollux replied, irritating as ever. "We'll jutht have to leave him and thee how it turnth out."

Vriska nodded, then flipped Tavros back onto his back, ignoring his unconscious wince the best she could. Just as she had done to Sollux the very night before, she pulled the blankets up to his chin, and prepared for a long night.

"Vrithka, you need to thleep."

Too tired to protest at his words, she reminded, "Anything at all happens, you wake me up, okay?"

And then, careful not to jostle the poor boy further, she slid under the covers, and lay there, too tired ironically enough and traumatised at what had just occurred to fall asleep at first. Yet as Tavros began to settle into a more regular sleeping pattern, she found the gentle rise and fall of his chest oddly soothing, and the soft in, out, in inhalations of breath calming on her mind… and slowly, slowly, she drifted off to sleep.

"Goodnight."


	7. The four wheeled device

**== > Tavros, wake already**

…

**== > Tavros, wake up**

…

**== > Your mother is a hamster and your father smells of elderberries**

…

**== > Fine. Be Vriska**

You are now Vriska Serket

Images flitted through her mind of strange unrelated things: of her mother's and sister's faces, this oddly nice stone she had found once, her favourite meal (Mexican), the view she was usually greeted with in the mornings of her bedroom… except not today. And probably not ever again. The final image that shot before her eyelids was that of the boy she had killed…

When she awoke, an early morning dew clung to the world outside the window, with a few small birds singing… or maybe it was a recording, who knew? Either way, it seemed like the perfect start to the day, aside from the boy who lay next to her, silent as the grave. Memories from the day before came flooding back and she sat up quickly, leaning across to find Tavros's pulse… if he still had one.

First, she felt for his wrist, and to her horror, there was no pulse. Next, she spread her palm directly above his heart, and waited.

Lub dub… lub dub… lub dub…

Breathing a sigh of relief, she sunk back down into the comfort of the bed. Although it was a weak, fluttering heartbeat, it was a heart beat none the less. If she were religious, she would have thanked God. Yet she was not, and so she merely cast her dice a thankful look. It seemed that Tavros's earlier bad luck had been countered by him staying alive throughout the night. Group Eight were still in action.

Wait… how long had she been asleep for? Surely all night by the light coming in through the window.

"Tho he'th okay, right?" Sollux drawled from his chair by the door, looking awake, if not a little exhausted, eyes screwed tightly shut as he rubbed them from behind the shades.

Vriska shrugged. "Well, he's still alive, if that's what you mean."

"That'th good enough for now," the geek decided, getting up from the chair and walking towards Vriska. "Your turn to keep watch. I'm going to bed."

Although she would have quite happily slept for another few hours, she left her side of the bed, and walked over to Tavros's side.

"Hey, you, wake up," she said, prodding his arm. When he did not respond, she lightly shoved him. "I said wake up!"

"Vrithka, let him thleep." Vriska pulled a face at the geek, but left Tavros alone nonetheless. She marched over to where the chair was, and plonked herself down into it, resting her chin in her palm. And so began the long and boring shift as she waited for one of them to wake.

After a couple of hours, a groan came from the bed, followed by the sound of an imminent panic attack. Tavros had awoken.

* * *

**== > Be the girl with the goggles**

You are now Feferi Peixes

Life in the mansion was uneventful, and if she was honest, not very different from her life before the mutations, with the exception of Kanaya's presence. Eridan had taken to sweeping around the place, with some random piece of curtain tied around his shoulders in place of his usual cloak. It was weird, but at least he was acting normal. Kanaya, on the other hand, spent most of her time in the observatory with Feferi, conversing about anything other than their old lives. Because of both of their extremely rare blood types, they emphasised with each other and quickly became friends, despite knowing only what Wikipedia said about the other.

Kanaya had a love for tailoring, and someday wished to become a fashion designer of some sort, despite the midwifery that her blood-caste usually demanded. However such an outcome looked bleak for her; there rarely choice as to what she could become, and it a way it made her more trapped than the low-bloods. But hell if that mattered now since she was a mutant.

Yet that day Feferi did not want to speak to the Russian girl, who seemed to be moping about something. She was not in the mood to enquire about what was wrong with the world, and so left the house, double-ended trident in hand, to explore the gardens.

Buzzing from the electric fence created a bass to the sounds in the garden, with the rustling of wind through the bushy canopy the over sound. Tapping her long fingernails against the handle of the trident in a certain pattern, she was amused to find it could almost be music. And so she began to sing, hesitantly with little gusto.

"I opened my eyes, last night, and saw you in the low light. Walking down by the bay, on the shore, staring up at the planes that aren't there anymore." As she sang further, she grew more confident and span in a little circle, amused by her fairly… interesting… singing. A grin spread over her face at the lyrics, which were fairly odd, but sweet none the less, and her ridiculously long hair floated around her as she swirled, creating a halo of dark hair cascading around her body. She was incredibly thankful that they had not decided to shave their hair off. "Time together is just never quite enough. When you and I are alone I've never felt so at home. What will it take to make or break this hint of love?"

Despite knowing full well that Kanaya and probably Eridan could well see her from the observatory prancing around, she continued. The singing made her feel less scared by the situation, and relieved stress like it was nobody's business, which was definitely a plus, as she had been on the verge of pulling her hair out from frustration. "All my islands have sunk, in the deep. So I can hardly relax or even oversleep. I feel as if I were home, some nights, when we count all the ship lights."

"I guess I'll never know, why sparrows love the snow." A deep voice came from behind her, startling the girl mid-dance despite how they could clearly sing better than her. She whirled around, the tips of the trident pointing at the neck of the intruder… oh. It was just Eridan. Really, she should have been able to guess from the accent, but due to puberty, his pitch had been getting lower for longer periods of time, and she was getting confused at these two different voices. Not to mention the fact that his accent was dropped while singing. "Wwhoa, Fef. It's just me."

"Oh, sorry! I wasn't really expecting you to pop up… oh cod, how much did you hear?" she blushed, embarrassed at the thought of someone else hearing her singing. For Feferi, singing was incredibly personal. She did not want even Eridan to hear it really. "Um… this is awkward."

"Wwhy?" Eridan smiled. He really was nice when he was not swearing every two seconds, or waving that absurdly huge gun around. "Come on, Fef. Wwe've knowwn each other for over ten years now. A bit a' singin' isn't that bad."

Rather than answering, she avoided his gaze, because how to say that she had been getting these strange feelings in her gut whenever she looked at him, recently? How, god it was embarrassing, that she had been having dreams where he would kiss her, and she would offer no resistance and almost, _almost_ , hope that he would do the same in real life. But it was stupid. He was a _brother_ to her, not a boyfriend, and she would do well to remember it. Sheesh.

"It's just… embarrassing. That's all." she sighed, then gave a small yelp as he grabbed her around the waist and span her in a small circle, the curtain-cloak flaring out behind him as she was lifted off the ground, screaming in delight at their antics. Oh cod, this was _Eridan_! How could she even be seeing him in such a way, with his hipster-glasses, the bad-guy cloak, his over-sized scarf and the cute purple streak in his hair? Lousy goddamn stupid hormones making her act stupid.

Then, as they mock waltzed to the sound of the electric fence, they sang together, "We'll turn off all of the lights and set this ballroom aglow!"

When they finally returned inside, darkness had fallen. Granted, they had not sung for the hours they were outside, but instead explored the vast gardens, hand in hand like they had travelled as children, when they were still the orphaned nobodies that Feferi continued to feel like on the inside.

**== > Reminisce about tragic past**

Oh _okay_ , you will tell all. But it _is_ tragic

Following the crisis of the nuclear war, it was not an uncommon sight for orphans to be wandering around without parents. And indeed, it was also not an uncommon sight for these orphans to be trafficked into certain unpleasant industries. It was also well known that certain stuck up royal-bloods found it perfectly acceptable to sleep around with such orphans to relieve some of the stresses that came with their titles. It was from such unpleasant unions of aristocrats and prostitutes that Feferi Peixes and Eridan Ampora came about.

Feferi's mother had been a strong willed woman who very rarely raised her voice, but when she did, people knew to hide. Like many others in such predicaments, orphaned by the war, she had decided that the only way to earn a vaguely decent living for herself would be to sell her body, thus she did. So one pompous aristocrat, and a failed contraceptive later, Feferi came about. If she had her way, she would have quit the industry all together at the girls birth, but in such an economic climate, it was impossible. Certainly, she was a high-blood, but her downfall was the extra toe on her left foot, which automatically removed such privileges, so for the first five years of Feferi's life, she was raised in a brothel in Moscow. In a similar situation, came Eridan. His father was a sweet and metrosexual young man, with a love for dying his hair a delicate shade of purple, except hell it was dyed, for that was his title removing mutation. These traits had passed on to Eridan, with his love of looking pretty darn fine 24-7, just as his dad had raised him. The industries Feferi's mum worked in dealt with men and women near equally, and following a similar failed contraceptive, nine months later, Eridan's father found a small basket delivered to his room. Inside was a baby, purple in the face from crying with a shock of dark hair and intense dark eyes – Eridan.

Having rooms next door to each other, not to mention a healthy amount of attraction to the other, their parents raised the children together, one taking care of them while the other worked, and so on. It was an odd existence, but for five years, they were happy. And then, between them, they had finally saved up enough to leave the prostitution business and buy a home together. But in a fit of jealousy, one of Feferi's mum's previous customers shot both her and Eridan's dad when he caught them together, killing them, and then himself. Feferi and Eridan would have had a home, and a family. But fate had a different future in mind.

With no one to take them in, the children were thrown onto the streets of Moscow mid-winter. It was a miracle in itself that they managed to survive for the first winter, let alone another three _years_ , and yet they did.

What earned them the money for survival, however, was a very, very strange thing. Eridan, from the age of four, had been able to change the appearance of objects at first, and then change them into a completely different item. His father hadn't a clue how he did this, but he encouraged his son's talent in case of need, but reminded him not to tell anyone outside their makeshift family. But it had its limits. As soon as the boy fell asleep, the magic was reversed, and the item turned back into what it was before. For the first few years on the streets, this proved to be an incredibly valuable asset, with Eridan transforming clumps of snow, dead leaves and the like into beautiful, plump, red roses to sell to those walking by. While the residents of Moscow probably should have questioned where such gorgeous roses had come from, most decided instead to give the children some money. Really, they should have sent them to the police or something, but most assumed they were rust-bloods without parents. How wrong they were.

Each night, they would return to a small den they had made and huddle together for warmth, and still did now, despite their vast penthouse and stacks of money. Except now they huddled for comfort, rather than warmth.

Any money the made went towards food or blankets, occasionally paracetamol if one got sick, as that was the only medicine they knew of. But due to their purple-blood, neither fell ill very often, as long as they drank enough. Although disaster struck around about the time they were seven, when they were removed from Moscow on account of scamming people. Well, they essentially were when the bunches of roses people would buy turned into slush as soon as they got home. They were dumped in a rural area of Russia, and as far as the police knew, the scamming rust-blood low lives were out of mind. Out away from the cities, they faced a different dilemma. They could no longer sell roses to the occupants if they would see the same people day in day out. So they only sold them to tourists from then onwards.

Yet it was while handing out a rose to a kind blue-blood passing through, that Feferi pricked her finger on one of the thorns, creating a small, royal purple bead of blood. The man's eyes had bulged, and he immediately rushed the two of them off to be tested. Indeed, Feferi Peixes was the human on earth of the highest possible blood-caste, with Eridan not far behind her. Due to their hardships, also because they just looked so darn cute, they were bolstered to celebrity status, and given all of the money they desired through mysterious sponsors. Heck, some oddities even wrote _fanfiction_ about their mysterious past, and even them getting together.

In the years that passed, Eridan slowly lost his ability to transmogrify items as he no longer had to practice it and became arrogant, much to Feferi's horror. They both forgot how to speak their original Russian, and as a result, much of the hardships they went through. But then again, they were only eight when they were found and moved to New York, so it was hardly surprising, and expected really that they would put much of it out of mind.

That was before the mutations began.

"Hey, grumpy-gills. How are your sides?" Feferi asked as they came back inside. Rubbing the flanks of her ribs, she noted a change in texture, and then for completely comparative measures only, of course, she ran her hand down his side, made all the more uncomfortable at the purple blush that flashed up on his cheeks.

"Wwhoa, have you even heard a' personal space?"

She snorted, and pulled him in the direction of the bathroom. "Come on, I've got an idea of what they are!"

"Uh… wwait, wwhat are you suggestin'?"

"Aah! That's not what I meant! Throw me a line, Eridan, will you?" Feferi grinned, deciding that he had assumed the worst… which he had. Jeez, she was not a pervert and suggesting they should bathe together… not completely. "No, well, I just have this weird hunch. Anyway, come on, I'll show you. It's too weird to explain."

The bathroom of the mansion was enormous, with a bath the size of a small swimming pool on the ground floor. Pristine, white tiles created elegant patterns on the floor, heated by geothermal energy, they were warm to walk on, and so the high-bloods discarded their shoes and socks as Feferi began running a bath. All around them, strange images were portrayed on the walls as mosaics; the Nemean lion, Aphrodite and Eros transforming into fish to escape the monster Typhon, and many others. It took them a few minutes to figure out it was the depictions of the star signs. Ah.

"Looks about done." Feferi switched off the taps, and thus the flowing, heavenly scented water. "Okay, so before you freak out big-time, this about these… things we're getting on our sides. Don't pull me out straight away, okay?"

Feferi then proceeded to step out of the boiler suit, and pull her vest off so she was stood only in her bra and shorts. Instantly a purple flush began to rise on both of the faces of the present members, but she countered this by giving Eridan a smile, and jumping into the water. For about a minute, she simply sat underwater, grinning to herself in sheer awe at what her body had done. From her sides, it appeared as if strange coils of purple blood began to diffuse into the surrounding water. With the second minute, Eridan panicked and leapt in after her, worried that she had gotten stuck.

Ohgodohgodohgod something was very, very wrong with his sides. His boiler suit seemed to be sucking into them somehow, creating such an odd sensation that he tried to scream with shock, but that tended not to work when one was underwater, and as the water soaked into his clothes, he sunk to the bottom, too heavy to swim upwards with any ease. His mouth fixed in a wide gape, he clawed at his side, trying to alleviate the wrong feeling that rested there. Feferi made a strange glubbing noise as she grabbed him around the waist and dragged him back to the surface.

"Jesus Christ, Fef! Wwhat wwere you thinkin'?" he whimpered while gulping down the sweet air that surrounded him once more. "I mean, seriously, wwhat?"

"Ugh, your scarf!" she sighed, unwinding the limp mess and laying it out to dry over a radiator.

"My scarf?" he cried incredulously. "I think that's the least a' our worries. Wwhen did you decide it wwould be a great idea to drowwn yourself?"

"I wasn't! Let me explain… no actually, I'll show you properly this time." Feferi gave him a devious grin as she unzipped his boiler suit and pulled his vest off, despite his confused protests. "Look."

First, she motioned his gaze towards her sides, where four slits rested between the gaps of her ribs on either side. At the moment, a flap rested firmly shut on all of them, allowing no air in, yet when she slid into the water once more, they opened out, extending delicate, purple, external gill fronds that seemed to taste the water, absorbing the oxygen easily from the liquid that surrounded it. Next, she motioned towards the very same flaps on his sides, where his gills resided, hidden within until they encountered water once more. Covered by fabric, his gills had previously been unable to extend fully, so resulted in them only partially opening, with fabric being pulled in rather than water.

"Come on, take a dive! It feels really weird, but good."

"No wway." he protested, put off by how it had turned out last time. "I'm not goin' through that again."

"Oh come on, grumpy gills! It's fin!"

"Your fish puns are gettin' more an' more obscure."

"Because you're being stupid! Get in here, or I'll make you!" Feferi pouted, fighting a grin because she knew she would win out in the end. "Scared of the water, are we?" But for once, she did not get her way. He merely pulled the boiler suit back on and stalked out of the room, cape swishing as he went. Had she… pushed him too far?

* * *

**== > Console Tavros as he wakes, Vriska**

Well, you don't know about _consoling_ or anything, but pestering works for you

"Oh fuck."

Interestingly enough, that was the first time Vriska had heard Tavros swear in such a manner. Although really, if anyone had the right to swear, it was the boy who had just permanently lost the use of his legs.

"Tavros-" Vriska began, trying to prevent the imminent panic attack just peaking over the horizon.

"Oh… oh god… shit, shit, shit." His breaths came faster as he began to hyperventilate, but heck was Vriska going to let that happen.

Grabbing him by the shoulders, she stared at him. "Hey, Tavros, listen to me-"

"You… why did you push me?" Finally noticing Vriska hovering over him, Tavros looked her right in the eyes and uttered his confused question.

"Because you were being freaking slow! If I hadn't done that, the intruder would have got us, and we _all_ would have died!" she hissed, very much aware that Sollux would not appreciate being woken. Then, after realising her thought pattern, decided she did not give two stuffs about whether Sollux wanted to sleep. But finally, remembered she could not yell even if she did want to wake Sollux for being a smart arse, because it would give away their position once more. Hell if she was going to do that again.

Tavros flushed, embarrassed, ashamed at his weakness. And yet, a flicker of confidence made him mumble, "You didn't have to… to push me like that."

"Ugh." She could just about stand him before, but this… this _weakness_ he was now developing… it disgusted her. Weakness was the little girl who came home crying because she had been bullied for her glasses. She was not going to tolerate such weakness ever again. Flicking her hair back over her shoulder, she placed her fingers on both temples in the position she had come to associate with the strange psychic powers she had been developing. Her disgust being the strong surge of emotions that allowed the instincts in her mind to surface. "Okay, so I'm going to test something."

"Uh…" he started, before she stared into his eyes, making him her puppet.

In his weakened state, controlling him felt different to the previous subjects of her mind-control. It was almost as if she could feel the cut on his back… ouch. That was pretty nasty. And then for his legs, there was a blank zone for that area, sort of like no reception on a phone.

"Sit up." she ordered, and indeed, Tavros put his arms at his sides and slid upright into a seating position, his thin arms quivering as they did all of the work. This was not looking good. Mentally crossing her fingers, she said, "Good boy. Now, stand up."

His torso twisted to accommodate for the imminent turn… but it never came, because stopped by the friction of the bed sheets, and his spine, his legs could not, _would_ not move.

"Stand up." She tried again, but with the same results. "Stand up. Stand up! Stand up you baby!"

He was paraplegic. He could not stand up… ever again.

Frustrated, she broke off the connection and stalked over to the chair, sitting heavily in it, lounging as she stared at the boy's endeavours to stand. He was never going to walk again, it was clear from the pain in his face as he furiously rubbed at his spine… pfft, as if that was going to help him in any way.

For a while, he shot her terrified looks. He now knew of her power, and what she could make him do… what she could make _anyone_ do. If she wished, she could simply force people to kill themselves. It was exactly as he had suspected. Such power… it was insane! But something had been holding her back from an imminent killing spree that would place Group Eight as winners. Either the power had not yet fully developed, or she was not able to kill people as her heartless attitude suggested. Tavros, of course, had not been there to witness her minor freak-out when she realised she had killed a member of Group Two. So he was justly horrified at this power, and what it could mean for him.

As Sollux slept for a further few hours, she continued to watch Tavros sadistically. Alarmingly, she was finding it interesting, almost enjoyable even to watch him struggle with his new found disability. Sure, she would have to pick him up to place him back on the bed every now and then, but it worth the fun… until she got fed up of having to stand every few minutes.

"You looked like you almost stood there, hotrod!" she called, grinning at his hopeful look… before he collapsed into a small pile on the floor, and she collapsed in giggles.

But rather than shoot her hateful glares, he simply gave a sad sigh and began the long journey of hoisting himself back onto the bed, as Vriska had since gotten bored of lifting him on. Running a hand through his hair, making many parts of it stick up on end, he then rested his face in his hands… she could hear the sobbing from where she was sat: the dry, hitching sobs, the tear's splats as they hit the fabric of his trousers. He was muttering something under his breath… what even was he doing? Oh. He was clutching that Tinkerbull toy of his. That would explain it.

Eventually, he wiped the orange-tinted liquid from his face, and stared blankly into space. Ugh, this was almost painful to watch. ' _Is he having a mental breakdown? Should I do something_?' Silently, Tavros reached for Sollux's shoulder, and immediately, Vriska fixed her eyes upon his.

"What are you doing?"

"Uh… I need to, uh, go to the… the toilet." he mumbled, making them both flush with embarrassment.

"Oh Jesus, yes, yes, wake him up." Vriska stammered, horrified by the mere thought of having to take him to the toilet. "Ack, too much information."

In stark contrast to the girl, Sollux was understanding of Tavros's situation and, with his muscles straining a little, the geek carried him towards the bathroom, instructing him to yell when he needed him again. Upon returning to the bedroom, Sollux was greeted with a sour looking Vriska with her fingers stuck in her sensitive ears (dear god, she did not want to hear him on the loo). "What? You're gonna have to get uthed to hith dithability. The chanceth of him recovering are low."

"That doesn't mean I have to like it." she replied, eyes narrowing.

"Seriouthly? How do you think thith feelth to him? He'th _disabled_." Sollux's face retained it's carefully blank expression, yet Vriska could sense the anger behind his words. She could break him yet.

Evidently done, Tavros called, "Uh… Sollux?"

"Yeah." the boy replied, then went to fetch him back. Now unblocking her ears, Vriska could hear their conversation on the other side of the house near perfectly. By the sound of it, Tavros was apologising profusely for making Sollux carry him around, to which the geek was assuring him that it was the least he could do. It sickened her to her core… within a few days, she had killed one child, and permanently disabled another… well, permanently for who they were now.

If Tavros had been a high-blood, and obviously not a mutant, he could easily get treatment in the form of stem cells and nanobots to fix him. They would take a sample of his cells, grow a clone of him and extract the stem cells while it was still no more than a clump of cells. No more individually conscious than a finger. And yet Vriska imagined that Tavros would have a problem with creating, and then disposing of a clone to save his spine. He was sappy like that. Odd. And as for the nanobots… well, perhaps he would be a little less opposed to those. But they could not do their work without the stem cells, so there would be little use.

"Vrithka, could you get the door?" Sollux asked, unable to open the door handle with his arms preoccupied on holding Tavros up.

"Magic word!" she called back to be irritating, also because he should use manners.

"Ugh… pleathe."

"I'm sorry?"

"Theriouthly? Vrithka, open the fucking door."

With a sigh, she twisted the handle and opened the door, allowing Sollux to stagger in and dump the smaller boy on the bed, before he took the chair Vriska had previously been in.

"Hey, tho what are we going to do about moving you in the long term?" the geek asked Tavros, who at the moment was just looking incredibly embarrassed.

"Oh… uh, I hadn't really… um… well, thought about this in the, uh, long term." It was understandable; no one would readily embrace their paralysis without a fight, or believing that there was a glimmer of hope in the future that they would be able to walk again.

"Well, we're going to have to make you something then. Because I sure as hell aren't going to carry you all the way to another shelter if things go wrong again." The girl fisted her hands deep within the warmth of her hair, then relaxed once more. "We'll have to fashion you some kind of wheelchair… or four-wheeled device or whatever. But enough of that shit. We need to have breakfast and count our supplies."

There were no protests at the suggestion of breakfast. Both Vriska and Sollux were drained from their fleeing the night before, and Tavros from the amount of blood he had lost. They made sure he drank plenty of water, and managed to force some corned beef down him, despite his protests – he was a vegetarian.

Oh lord, he was actually crying at the thought of eating another animal… Vriska was not sure whether to laugh or join him with his tears. Weakling. It was just meat. But while he protested, he was too weak to push it away or anything drastic. It was swallow or choke. And his body was not going to let him choke. After another round of protests as Sollux tried to force more down him, Vriska grabbed the tin off him, and jabbed the fork towards Tavros's face, stopping only at the last minute.

"Okay, are we going to do this the easy way, or the hard way?" Vriska said.

"Vrithka-"

"No, shut up, Sollux. Listen, Tavros. With the amount of blood you lost, if you don't eat some protein pretty soon you're going to die." she focused her intense gaze upon him. "Do you remember what I did earlier? Where I made you sit up? I can do that again."

"What are you talking about… Tavroth?"

Fear filled the boy's eyes as he remembered her powers. Not only could she make him eat the food, but… well, who knew what else she could do once she was in his mind. Admittedly less than with Sollux with his working legs, but she could make a mockery of him yet.

"Ever been told to keep your nose out of other peoples business?" Vriska spat, but her expression soon relaxed as she turned to Tavros once more. "You can chose to eat, or I can make you eat. Either way, you're going to eat the meat. If you don't, you'll die, and we'll lose. We are _not_ going to lose. You hear? So I'm going to count down from three, and you will eat this.

'Three. Two. One." Deciding to take his fate into his own hands, the boy inched forwards towards the food and took it from the fork, scrunching his face up as he swallowed. The taste, the texture, everything about it was repulsive, and he worked hard to hold back the gag reflex trying to throw it back up. But of course, Vriska was correct. Tavros needed protein or he would suffer.

Another bite… and another… BLUH.

"Thaaaat's right. Good boy! Now, do you think you can take the can yourself?" Her tone was sickeningly sweet, but exactly the right one for the job. Tavros took the tin from her and finished it in silence… although the silly faces stayed as he winced and grimaced his way through the meal. It sickened him how much stronger he felt after it… "Thank you, Tavros. Now then. Onto the wheelchair."

This took another few hours as they sourced the wheels and nails to create it, then a matter of minutes when they found a wheelie computer chair and attached a belt to it to strap him in. Currently, he could not get himself around, but others could move him. Grabbing onto the handles of the chair for support, Tavros braced himself before Vriska 'tested' it, running them down the hall with a grin on her face.

"I, uh, think it works. You can s-stop." he stammered as they reached the end of the corridor.

"Nah, this is fun. Enjoy it while you can, Tavros. Because the next time we do this, it may be when we're fleeing for our lives."

"Uh…"

* * *

Your name is Feferi Peixes,

You have the most noble blood possible, and are the only of your kind to possess it, although rumour has it there is a HUGEASS deep sea monster that you share it with, but you disregard these rumours. This makes you the HEIR APPARENT for global rulership, which ordinarily would place you in considerable jeopardy. HER IMPERIOUS CONDESCENSION, your aunt on your fathers side, would make an attempt on your life herself if it were not for your idol status.

And if not for this glubbing mutation, you would have BIG PLANS FOR THE THRONE. All the plans. All of them. You would use your reign to UNITE ALL BLOOD CASTES. You were told you would do this one day by your mother, but now you're a mutant, and she's dead. Oh well, you suppose NOT ALL PROPHECIES CAN COME TRUE.

As of late, a GREY HUE has been spreading across your skin, much to the alarm of your long time PLATONIC SOUL-MATE THING, and yourself. Because of this, you both attempted to HIDE FROM THE MEDIA, but they assumed that the aforementioned soul-mate had KNOCKED YOU UP REAL GOOD, so you obviously had to 'FESS UP.

Lousy goddamn stupid radiation.


	8. Get your eye checking on

**== > Be Vriska's kind of friend**

Well, the list for that is fairly short, in fact, there is only one on that list, so you are now Terezi Pyrope

Night had long since fallen by the time Terezi awoke from her nap, which was pretty odd considering how she had only gone to sleep sometime off noon. But hey, it happened. She spent a moment rubbing her eyes, as they were dry and irritated from her sleep, a family trait it seemed. The bridge of her nose felt naked without the familiar, red-lensed sun glasses she wore, so she felt for the bedside table where they had previously lain and… darn, she knocked them on the floor.

Where was the light switch? She could have sworn there was a lamp on their bedside table! Ah, no, wait, Gamzee, the lax Australian, had used it to smash some guy over the head when he tried to break in (which had considerably shocked the rest of their team), so it was not working, per se, at the moment. Surely there would be some light coming in from the moon though if it was night? Ugh, maybe Karkat had shut the curtains. Fishing her hand down the side of the bed, she scooped up the glasses in no time and slid them on… odd, her face felt wet… perhaps she had one of her weird nightmares where she woke up crying. That was probably it, but damn was it embarrassing to do that in front of this weird duo.

"Karkat? Karkat?" Terezi hissed as she rose to her feet, waving her arms about her in case she walked into something by mistake. "Where are you?"

"What the fuck are you playing at? I'm right here, dumbass." His voice came from somewhere to her left, and so that is where she would go.

"Oh, because _you're_ such an expert at seeing in the dark?" she grinned, a nice hint of sarcasm to her voice. Having found a wall, she kept a hand resting on it, relying on the other arm to tell her when something was in the way. "Seriously, where are you? Did you close the curtains or something, dummybrain?"

"Why the fuck would I do that? Have you been smoking some of Gamzee's hair? Because he's so full of it that you could get the same kind of doping from taking any part of him." Oh Jesus Christ, she had gotten him started. Well, at least it would be kind of fun to listen to. "It would give away our position, sending up a flag of 'shoot me in the fucking eye if you would be so kind' to any douche in the vicinity, because people tend not to shut the curtains of houses they're _not in_."

"Jeez, crabby, it was just a question. Where are you?"

"The hell do you mean?"

"I mean it's dark, numbskull, and I can't see." When her choice of words left her mouth, she heard a rustling of fabric as Karkat turned to face her, and then the swearing began.

" _Oh fuck, what the fuck happened to your fucking eyes, woman_?" She allowed herself a snort of amusement at how his voice broke mid-sentence before his words processed in her mind.

"What on earth do you mean?"

Ah, it seemed that she had forgotten Karkat's general dislike for blood, injuries and the like. When he saw such things he tended to have a minor freak-out, like he was having at that moment. So from this, she deduced that someone had injured her eyes, hence the darkness and Karkat's panicking.

Well damn, she liked being able to see. But she told herself to remain calm, and that panicking would do nothing for her.

Karkat, sensing that perhaps him panicking would not be a good idea for her, took a deep breath to calm down. He was the leader, he had to be mature, sophisticated and shit. "Terezi, it's still sunny. You should be able to see."

Okay, so perhaps she was not perfectly calm.

"Where's the bed?" she demanded, pleased when the Californian led her to it near instantly, seating her down securely. "What happened?"

"Uh… well, your eyes are completely fucking red. Like the whites, the pupils, everything. And there's blood coming from the sides… I assume it's blood anyway. You're a teal-blood, right?"

She nodded.

"Yeah, well, shit." The boy scratched the buds on either side of his temples. Unlike Terezi and Gamzee, the lumps on his head were not as irritating as theirs for reasons they would soon discover. "Well… I'm sorry I guess."

Terezi frowned, "It's not your fault. Why the hell are you apologising, crabby?"

"Because jokes about my star-sign and temperament are so original." He rolled his eyes… not that she could tell. Gamzee seemed to have a vague interest in what their star signs were, so they had all told each other what they were. Terezi was a Libra, and thus the oldest at fourteen, Gamzee a Capricorn with his birthday in a couple of months, and Karkat a Cancer, so the youngest of the twelve they had been initially put into.

"What's up, sister?" Gamzee said as he walked in, finding the other two members of Group Nine looking grim. "Hmm… that doesn't look good."

"You don't fucking say?"

"Relax my crabby brother." With a smile, Gamzee knelt before the girl, sliding off the glasses and placing them on the bedside table.

"What are you doing?" she asked, but was ignored as he inspected her eyes. Again, she repeated in a slightly more panicked tone, "What are you doing? I can't see."

"Oh, sorry, sis. I forgot." This time around, his smile was sheepish. "I'm gonna get my motherfucking eye-checking on. See what's going with your vision."

"And how do you know this?" Terezi asked. Immediately Gamzee's face closed up, before being replaced with his usual smile, which although relaxed looking had an air of fake to it. Indeed, it _was_ being faked.

"It looks like someone poured a chemical in your eyes." The swearing was dropped as he got his 'motherfucking eye-checking on' and inspected her now red orbs. "I can't say what it was, but it must have been made specifically. Probably by some chemists kid, because there's no way you wouldn't have been able to feel going blind with bleach or whatever. That was some motherfucking funky cocktail on your eyes right there. In fact…" He used his little finger to wipe up a little of the liquid running from her eye and sniffed it. Upon getting little information, he dabbed the tip of the finger on his tongue, and spat it out immediately.

"Did you just taste my blood?" Terezi said incredulously. "And they say I'm odd! He he."

"What the hell? Why would you do that?" Another freak-out from Karkat. He really needed to calm the hell down.

The Australian patted Karkat on the head. "Calm down, bro. I was just seeing if I could pick up the chemicals."

"Because obviously _ingesting_ them is a great fucking idea!" Oddly enough for someone who flipped-out so often, his voice was fairly soft and quiet, Californian accent quite relaxed and tone rarely rasied except for emphasis, so it was sometimes hard to catch the sarcasm… or the occasional lack of it.

"Nothing stood out or anything. So I won't be able to fix it, I think. The best we can do is wash your eyes and see what happens." Gamzee stood again, pulling her to her feet and towards the bathroom. "Sorry, Terezi."

"Don't be. Like I said to Karkat, It's not your fault. I mean, I guess this could be worse. If this had to happen to anyone in our group, it's best it's me." she shrugged, then paused, assuming their expressions had changed to that of curiosity before she resumed her sentence. "My mum's blind, but she's still a lawyer and works, so I know stuff about how it works and how to get around it."

That sentence made her mum seem way more badass than she actually was. In fact, she was saccharine to not only her daughter, but all of her clients and half the court room, referring to them as 'sweetie', 'dear' and 'lovely'. But of course, she reserved most of it for Terezi to be super embarrassing, showering her with affection and kisses when she returned home from work. In truth, she felt incredibly guilty for the amount of time she missed with her daughter on cases, and tried to make up for it whenever she could. Even when she was gone at work, she would have left little notes before she left about the house. Her scrawled handwriting made very little sense to her daughter, but Terezi appreciated the concern. She could be a bit of a mummy's girl at times.

Gamzee placed the toilet seat down, and then seated Terezi on it, instructing her to remain there until he got back with a cup.

"That dark horse!" she giggled to Karkat when the Aussie was out of earshot, in reference, of course, to the sudden knowledge he had on eye treatments. "D'you think he'll tell us about his dark and mysterious past?"

"It's not dark and mysterious or anything." the boy replied. "But I still won't tell you."

"Oh, go on, Karkles! And how do you even know?"

"First, don't fucking call me that. Second, no. Third, he told me, because obviously I'm better for telling these things to that some creepy girl like you."

"Aww, you're no fun!" She blindly reached out into the air before her, trying to find Karkat so she could prod him. Near instantly, he slapped her hand away, meaning she now knew where he was. And so it devolved into some kind of general batting/prodding war.

"I leave you for one motherfucking minute, and you've already become eight-year-olds. Miracles." Gamzee laughed at their antics while filling the cup he had found with water. He told Terezi to hold it to her eye, then lean her head backwards until it faced the ceiling. "So you're probably gonna get wet, sister."

And indeed, she did get wet. The cup was not of the correct size, so when she tilted her head backwards some of the water leaked from the sides onto her boiler suit. She did the exercises Gamzee instructed for each eye: to blink several times, look up, down, side to side, then look around in a circular pattern. When the water was washed down the sink for the second time, he examined her eyes once more. The redness had not been washed away in the slightest, although the blood had certainly been removed and there was no longer a teal-tint to the corners of her eyes, suggesting that most of the excess poison in them was gone, and with it, irritation to her eyes.

"Feel better, sis?"

"Yes, I do, thanks." she smiled, lightly touching her shut eyelids before putting the glasses back on. Now they would serve more like glasses to hide her blindness… funny how that had turned out really… After this, she reached out before her to find Gamzee, and upon finding him (after a few 'accidental' gropes of the front of his top) she patted him on the cheek. "Now we need to find this perpetrator and bring them to justice for the blinding of Terezi Pyrope."

"What's with the third person? Makes you sound like some kind of fucking role-player." Karkat commented.

"What a coincidence that you would say that!" she grinned and jabbed her finger in his general direction. Score. The missile met it's target and shit was begun, by which we mean another poking war. "Prime suspects: Karkat Vantas, Gamzee Makara and Vriska Serket."

"Why are we on the list? We're your team-mates. And who the hell is Vriska?"

"Ah. Poor, naïve Karkat." Terezi stroked his head as patronisingly as she could with a wicked grin on her face. "That makes you even more of a suspect. The very fact that you're not very suspicious _is_ suspicious. And as for Vriska… well, if anything bad has happened, she's probably got her fingers in it. With the number of irons she has in the fire, she's automatically a suspect." She then fully took in Karkat's question. "We go to the same school. I guess you could say we're kind of friends."

* * *

**== > So what happened to the guy in the shed?**

You are now Aradia Medigo, about to unveil the guy in the shed

By the time Aradia finally led them to the shed, the boy she had captured was still trying to escape, understandably, and had since smashed the sole window and attempted to wiggle out of it, undeterred by the small size of it and the sharp shards of glass in the frame. Because of this, his arms were laced with lacerations weeping blue blood. Crap, Aradia had forgotten about his blood caste.

In such situations, she had no reservations about beating the stuffing out of high-bloods if it meant protecting herself and her team. But from her observations of Equius, it seemed likely that he could 'flip his shit', as they say, at someone of a lower caste laying a hand on high-bloods. That meant Aradia.

Her hand paused, no longer wanting to unbolt the shed door. What if he got mad at her for locking the boy up in he shed, simply because of his higher caste that her? Again, Aradia was not weak, but she could certainly not overpower Equius. Such a thought was impossible. Madness. Especially with his weird super-strength coming out. Well, all she could really do was hope that he would see reason. And perhaps Nepeta would be able to pacify him a little.

"He should be weak enough, given his blood loss, but nevertheless, I shall deal with this. Kindly step away from the storage unit." Equius decided, and lightly pushed Aradia away, although with his strength it still felt like a shove to her. With a fluid movement, the bolt was moved back and the shed door opened. Instantly, the blue-blood inside tried to make a dash for freedom, but Equius was having none of it, grabbing his arms and dislocating one in the process.

" _Shit man_!" the boy screamed, his other arm reaching around to hesitantly touch the point of dislocation. It seemed that he had forgotten that Group Seven contained Equius Zahhak. Or as he was known by the other groups, 'that guy what's super-strong and shiz'. "Let me go, goddamn it!"

"A high-blood as yourself should not be using such lewd language." Equius frowned, and behind him Nepeta concealed a giggle of amusement. Ordinarily it was her on the receiving end of the 'poor language for someone of your blood caste' scolding, so it was refreshing seeing it placed on someone else.

"Seriously! Let me go, or I'll fucking scream, and your team will go down with mine when the others find us!" The desperate glint in the boy's eyes spoke volumes. Mainly at how he clearly was not going to do such a thing, as it would mean near certain death for him. It was risky, but at that particular point in time, his best option seemed to be remaining on Group Sevens better side. But if his plan was to threaten them with death… well… he could have gotten off to a better start.

"Surely he should have passed out by now with all that blood he's lost." Nepeta commented casually, noting the dark-blue clinging stubbornly to the boys clothes.

"Shut up, bitch! Just bec-" However he did not get any further, as Equius had punched him in the face so hard he fell instantly unconscious. So he did place Nepeta higher up than his high-blood-low-blood rubbish then, Aradia was pleased to notice.

Equius muttered, "What a disgusting, pathetic excuse of a blue blood." Before hoisting him up by the armpits then slinging him over his shoulders in a fireman's lift. "I shall go dispose of him somewhere. I should not be too long."

The Scotsman left, and so the two girls headed back inside. On her way to the final scraps of meat, Nepeta noticed the weapons Aradia had picked up, and brought it to her attention.

"What's with the bow?"

"Oh, I got it for Equius because he, euh, he does not have a weapon. But I realised after that he does not really need one." They both took a break to indulge in a slightly bitchy snort of amusement before Aradia picked up the bow in her hands.

Unlike that of most high-blood of the same age, her palms were rough and calloused from her training. She was under no illusion of what her mother had done to get to such a high position in T.R.O.L.L: having had to sleep with many of those of high places in the organisation, creating many disgruntled wives and children who would quite happily take it out on her daughter. Aradia could hardly blame them. She herself would have been angry, but that did not mean she would allow herself to be walked all over in return for actions her mother did to ensure her family lived a comfortable life. It was not nice, but hey, in such economic climates good people did bad things. This resulted in her training and fighting a lot in her free time, so her hands were not smooth in the least. Besides, she wanted to become an archaeologist, so it wasn't like her hands would stay soft for long if she took up upon such a career.

The bow pulled back smoothly, creating a satisfying 'twang!' as her fingers left the cord and it settled back into its original shape. Had she fired an arrow, it was likely that it would have missed the target, as her aim was off, but whatever. It was not as if she wanted to use the bow in the first place.

"Just so you know before-hand, he has this weird thing about bows."

"And by weird, you mean?" Her eyebrow raised slightly, expecting something really odd given that it was Equius they were discussing.

"Oh no! Not something _really_ weird! Just… well. He's always wanted to use a bow and arrow, not sure why, but he's too strong fur them, so they snap. Actually, when he was really little, I think, his mum taught him how to use one. She died before they adopted me." As she spoke, cat puns aside and knees clutched to her chest, a maturity befell her features, driving home the fact that in reality, she was four months older than him, and she merely looked (and okay, usually acted) like the younger sibling. "So that's purrobably why he likes using bows. To honour her memory, and be like her or something."

"That is sweet of him."

Like Aradia, all of Nepeta's skin was grey now, the whites to the eyes yellow, and the teeth all sharp and odd. Indeed, the only thing left for a complete transformation were for those weird bumps on their heads to burst and turn into whatever strange forms awaited them. But whatever, enough bluffing and beating around the bush, when everyone in Group Seven knew full well what these lumps on the head were! They were the buds of what would become horns. What the horns looked like, even Aradia did not know. But from what she had heard, the shape varied from mutant to mutant. She hoped hers looked pretty damn awesome to make up for the rubbish she had had to endure on behalf of the mutation. It was the least her body could do, really.

It was at this particular trail of thought, that Nepeta suddenly ripped the hat from her head, and bit down onto it, preventing her from screaming and giving their positions away… as if the blue-blood boy had not already essentially done that. Green tinted tears beaded in the corners of her eyes as she clutched at her temples. Whatever was causing her such pain must have been exceptionally bad to have such an effect on the usually strong Nepeta. It pained Aradia watching her friend in such pain, but there was little more she could do than lie her down in a more comfortable position on the floor and wait for Equius to return. Perhaps he knew what was going on, or at the very least comfort her better… unless this was due to the budding horns coming through, in which case there was little he could do. But doubtless, having her adoptive brother there with her would bring Nepeta the comfort she needed.

Prepared to offer some comfort to the girl, Aradia began, "Nepeta-"

And speak of the devil, Equius walked into the room, shutting the door softly before turning to see Aradia bent over a flinching Nepeta, curled up on the floor and groaning in pain. Instantly, his mind shifted to the worse case scenario, and he yanked Aradia upwards by her wrist, making her too cry out.

" _Lâcher moi maintenant, brute_!" she cried and, doing the first thing that came to mind, slapped him around the face with her spare hand. To her surprise, he indeed let her go, leaving her to fall into an awkward pile on the floor while he hovered over Nepeta, muttering soothing words in his Scottish lilt as he lifted her up and carried her upstairs. In truth, she suspected that his letting go of her had more to do with exactly where Nepeta was clinging at, as opposed to her words which he probably could not even understand. Or maybe, he had understood that it would be pointless for the French girl to try and hurt Nepeta, what with them being in the same team, and Nepeta having such a hulking brother to beat people up for her when she could not.

Well, what to do?

Aradia certainly did not want to go face Equius again. She knew full well that he would not apologise for his treatment of her, and even if (by some miracle of a Gamzee sized proportion) he did, she would not accept it. He was a creep. Simple as. And she should not have to deal with it. She wanted to go home, to never have to look upon these people's weird grey faces again… but there was little she could do about that.

With a sigh, she thought back to the group she had wanted to be on. Group Eight. If she could have somehow swapped places with Vriska, everything would have been fine. Poor Tavros would not be bullied by the Brit (as he doubtless was being this second), Equius would get his high-blooded team-mate, Nepeta, well, Aradia would miss the high-spirited girl, but sacrifices must be made, and she was certain that Nepeta could look out for herself. And finally, as sappy and sad as it was, the French girl had found herself with a little (big) crush on Sollux Captor. Judging by the goofy smile he had given her but a few days earlier, he may well have a thing for her to. He was in Group Eight, and so it would have been perfect. Aradia, Sollux and Tavros. Even thinking about his face made her feel better, complete with a slightly raised heartbeat and a flushed face. Wow she needed to get a life, but damn it, she was happy, so like _hell_ she would. If crushing on Sollux was stopping the fear and anger from settling in from this weird new world she had been dunked in, then she was fine with these feelings staying.

Okay, so how about she practiced with the whip? She kind of wanted to check up on Nepeta still, but she was in good hands, so never mind. Aradia took position in the middle of the room, feet apart and knees bent a little to ensure maximum balance. Flicking the handle, the body of the whip shot forth and bent in on itself, creating a loud CRACK that filled the room. The French girl grinned at this. It was such a familiar sound from her training that it was somewhat of a comfort.

Right. First things first. She needed to get used the feel of this particular whip. It was different to the one she had at home so if she were to fully utilise it as an effective weapon, she needed to work with it. SNAP! She aimed at a bottle by the sink, and she missed. Wow, she was lucky when she managed to hit the blue-bloods expanse of pipe in the heat of a fight… not that he would have been much of an opponent to her even without it. SNAP! The bottle again, and this time she managed to hit it, the end of the whip wrapping around the neck. With a tug it was pulled towards her and she caught it with ease. A long empty beer bottle… interesting. At least, she guessed it was beer, as beer was almost the same word as bière (beer in French) and the brand logo was the same.

CRACK! The tip of the whip hit an inch to the left of the dot she was aiming it. Not bad, but improvement needed. SNAP! Arg, almost there. SNAP! Better. SNAP CRACK SNAP! Ha! That boy hadn't stood a chance against these 'mad skillz'. Oh no. Not in the least. SNAP SNAP CRACK!

"The amount of noise you're producing is excessively irritating. You would do well to cease making it, gutterblood." Shit. Aradia had not heard Equius coming down the stairs. What to do? She couldn't really think of a reply containing suitable amounts of wit and irony… well not in English at any rate. Without realising it, she had begun to stare at him, panting slightly with excitement from her training still lighting her eyes.

What was with his expression… ah, damn. As a high-blood he was probably weird about the showing of skin, and she had long since shrugged off the top half of her jumpsuit and tied the sleeves around her waist so only her black vest covered her top half, showing off her grey shoulders and arms.

Oh gross, he had begun to sweat.

"I would prefer it if you used my name, connard." she replied, irritated at herself for not coming up with a better reply.

"Why should I humour you in such a fashion? Your blood is so low it doesn't even belong in sewage."

Oh man, she really wanted to cut him a scar across his face, but no. She would be civilised and decent… all traits that a 'low-blood' was supposed to lack in. Ha. That would show him… although her fingers were still clenched on her whip's handle in anticipation for conflict.

"But… I guess I owe you… an apology…" His voice went near silent, and immediately Aradia saw what was going on.

"Nepeta has forced you to appologise, has she not?"

"You honestly think someone of lower-blood could order me to do such a thing?"

"Yes. Yes I do. Because despite the, euh, differences in hair, eye, skin and blood colour, we are all human beings. So we are all equal."

"Is it common for people of your country to initiate revolutions against nobility, or is it merely a select few?" he asked. For a few seconds she merely gaped at him. Seriously? Was he honestly bringing up the French revolution? What sort of pitiful excuse for a human was he? Oh god, the urge to inflict serious pain upon him was getting stronger by the minute, but she still doubted she could do much. Unlike the other blue-blood, Eqiuis actually had a clue about combat – she had seen him in action when some creep slapped her butt at the start (who even does that?) – so she knew full well she would not do much damage. But hey, it was the thought that counts, right? Right? "Uh… without wanting to derail the topic at hand, is that a bow and arrow?"

Oh. She had forgotten about the bow.

**== > Don't give it to him don't give it to him don't give it to him**

You were not going to give it to him anyway! Mon Dieu, have a little faith!

Aradia nodded, slowly picking the bow and quiver up in her hands. "Yes. They are. But you cannot have them. They are mine."

"Ah." Oh man, what was with all his disgusting sweating? "Well then."

"Yeah. Well then." Her eyes were slightly narrowed, and yet deep down, she still wanted to change his attitude rather than let him be a jerkass forever. Without thinking, her mouth began to spout words. "Although, if you, euh, find it within you to apologise to me as if I am an equal to you, then… et bien, I would perhaps be willing to let you use it. That is, to give it to you."

Without another word, Equius turned and headed back upstairs. That would give him food for thought, she decided, and placed both the whip and the bow and arrow down on the floor. It was now time for her practice in combat, as she needed to keep agile if she were to be any use in a fight, and this training was near silent. Although irritating Equius would be ridiculously fun, she genuinely did not want to disturb poor Nepeta.

She jabbed her fists and feet through the air in a series of fluid movements, remembering the best moves for overpowering those bigger than her (Aradia was not particularly large, bless her) and those for ending fights as quickly as possible.

' _A hair bobble would be helpful_.' she thought to herself, and settled for trying her hair in a vaguely high pony-tail with a piece of string she found lying around. It soon slipped back down to the nape of her neck, which was irritating, because with hair as thick as hers the back of her neck soon got pretty sweaty after any sort of exercise. At times, she wondered if cutting it all off would be a good idea, but she had been growing it since 'the incident' when she was four (she'd hacked all her hair off) and so it would be weird to be free of its weight. Maybe one day… if she survived this.

* * *

**== > Be Vriska**

You are now Vriska Serket

Vriska's eyes snapped open after her particularly violent nightmare. Now awake, she could remember little of it, other than vast amounts of candy-red blood. Many had such nightmares, and scientists had decided it was because the human race had not yet gotten used to their change in blood colours, and so until the instincts of the mind caught up, there would continue to be a lingering fear at large amounts of red. Sitting up, she massaged the sides of her temples, the buds aching maddeningly, which could well have woken her up in the first place... not that she was complaining after that particular dream. Following a series of cat-like stretches, she padded down the corridor towards the bathroom.

"Shit." she announced to no one in particular. And then, upon deciding it was not enough, added, " _Lousy goddamn stupid puberty. UGH_!"

Like her mother had told her to expect, she had finally begun her periods on the exact day of her fourteenth birthday. Great. Quickly, she gave the room a scan for anything she could use to catch the flow. Ugh, she should have been expecting this really! Mutant or not, chances were she would still have a menstrual cycle. There were plenty of sanitary products in the shop they had raided, but she had barely glanced at them, bigger thoughts on her mind that the date she would start her periods. And she doubted either of the boys had brought some on her behalf. But as luck would have it, the girl in Group Two had brought several boxes of tampons with her. Well, Vriska had been hoping to start out with sanitary towels, but hey, beggars can't be choosers...

Later, sliding back into bed, she noticed Tavros's curious eyes upon hers, her getting up probably having jolted him awake. The moonlight on his face was kind, making his features look oddly cute... Ugh, stupid hormones.

"You okay?" Evidently he had picked up upon her slight levels of distress.

In an understandably bad mood, she snapped in response, "Be glad you're not a girl."

It shut him up straight away, his cheeks flaring orange. They soon fell back to sleep for a couple more hours, not noticing Sollux's smirk of amusement. When they woke once more at a respectable half ten, Sollux decided to take a nap as he had had difficulty getting to sleep while Vriska had been keeping watch.

"Hey, hotrod." Vriska said to Tavros. "Guess what."

"Uh... what?" They both kept hushed tones, not wanting to wake Sollux up, lest they face his wrath, which he had made very clear.

"No, you've got to guess. That's why I said 'guess what' rather than 'say what, then I'll tell you', so _guess_."

"Uh..." Other than mention the event that occurred earlier that morning, which he did not particularly want to since she had seemed fairly agitated, he hadn't a clue. "You found a grey hair?"

"Hey!" She cuffed him around the head at his cheeky grin, secretly pleased that he had perked up a little since the day before. Although there was still a sickly look to his face and his previously tanned skin was pale and sickly, he seemed to be staying strong. Taking pity on him, she sighed, "Since you're so useless, I'll just tell you. It's my birthday today! I'm fourteen now."

"Happy birthday!" Tavros smiled. "You're, uh, quite a bit older than me then."

"When's yours?"

"May." he replied, to which she nodded. She had expected him to be an August baby, but whatever. "Well, that's not, uh, loads older really, I guess."

Suddenly, from the distance, a scream was heard, echoing around the dry, still air with little resistance. It was different from the other screams they had heard so far; not like a scream of victory or one of a war cry, not like Tavros's scream when his back broke... this was the cry of someone being murdered. They each wondered whom it could be. One of the twelve mutants they had been a part of, just a few days ago, as they were lowered into the artificial village? Perhaps one of the other mutants, or someone they considered a friend? Mainly, they hoped it was not someone they knew.

There was little they could do about it, however, so they lowered their eyes in respect and fell silent. Another group were lost. Sollux remained asleep throughout it somehow, and frankly, they could not be bothered to wake him. They would tell him when he awoke.

The playful mood was promptly killed, so instead Vriska ordered, "Sit up. I need to change your bandages."

Thankfully, the large gash on Tavros's back had since stopped bleeding, although initially when they had first removed the shard of glass from his back, it had bled profusely, requiring a change in the bindings every hour or so. Now, it was just a question of keeping the wound clean and free from infection. As for his paralysis, there was nothing they could do about that.

"Actually, do you think it would be a good idea just to air it for a while?" Vriska asked as she unwound wrappings from the small of his back. She then remembered that he was biting down on a bit of fabric to stop him from crying out as she jostled and prodded at the wound. "Here." She helped him lie down on his front, then stood up, the bed shifting from the sudden lack of weight. "Well, I'm gonna go wash your bandages. I'll bring back the clean ones while I'm at it. Try not to get into too much trouble while I'm gone."

Despite being stained a permanent brownish-orange, Vriska scrubbed the blood off the bandages the best she could. In truth, she hadn't a clue on how to treat wounds, let alone heal them, because she tended to be the one to inflict them. At this line of thought, she wrung the fabric viciously between her hands, squeezing as much water from it as possible before unplugging the sink and letting the warm water drain out.

Water sizzled and hissed as it evaporated from the bandage hung over the radiator. That was another nice point of this house. It had central heating that was actually on, so they had been able to do a small amount of washing, each washing one item of clothing at a time, so that they would not be caught without most of their clothes. Because besides from being disadvantageous if the house was stormed by that of an enemy group, it would also be super embarrassing.

She scooped up the bandage and placed it on the bed, reminding him that she was going to leave the wound to air for a while, so until then he would have to sit with his top half bare. He then asked her to wake up Sollux, which was now the unspoken assumption that he needed the loo. The geek had by now made a full recovery, and like Vriska, was able to carry the smaller Tavros around for short periods of time, although not as long as her.

Once the deed had been done, Sollux dozed back off to sleep again in the bed at the far end of the room. The previous group had done a small amount of furniture rearrangement, and so there was space for three people to sleep at a time in the master bedroom.

Lord knows why they did it. Surely it was merely common sense to have someone keeping watch at all times, Vriska decided. Either way, it worked for them. Tavros took the double bed, with whomever not on guard duty sharing it with him. The second bed tended to be where those who had gotten little sleep while keeping watch could catch up on some z's. Another unspoken rule they had adopted was that someone should remain with Tavros at all time, due to his weakened state.

With the new house came new escape plans. They would use the nearest escape route (namely, windows) unless of course it was being blocked by an intuder. If not, Sollux would carry two packs filled with food and essentials - his and Tavros's - while Vriska, as the strongest, would carry her own rucksack, as well as carry Tavros. If, however the way to safety was blocked, then Sollux and Vriska would do their best to fend them off, protecting their disabled team mate. If worse came to the worst and an intruder did break through their guard, then Tavros had his jousting dagger... although if it came to this, honestly, they did not have much hope for their long term survival, because if Vriska and Sollux could not hold them off, then how on earth could Tavros of all people stop them?

After a little while longer, Vriska ordered him to sit up again, and began to wind the clean fabric on, a process which took a good ten minutes to do properly. The tufty haired kid winced as she continued to wrap the bandages around his torso. At this time, he could do little more than pull faces at the pain, until Vriska, actually sensing this vast irritation, said, "Tell me about your family."

"Oh, uh, well, I'm an only child. I live with my mom, dad and abuela... I, uh, mean grandma." When he stopped, she reached her hand forwards to where he could see it with a gesture that clearly meant 'go on'. "Uh… so my dad's an artist, and my mom works for some business company, doing, uh, paperwork or something. My mum makes most of the money generally, but my dad gets big commissions now and again, which is, uh, good. My grandma teaches Spanish at one of the local primary schools, but she doesn't get paid for that, because it's volunteer work."

"Volunteer work?"

"Where you do work for nothing."

"Surely people of your cast can't afford to do that." she frowned, genuinely curious and not just looking to insult him, which he picked up upon, and laughed, jostling his bandages and making him wince again.

"She's retired, so she already gets a bit of a pension. But she's not in it for the money. She's doing it so that there's less ignorance towards the Hispanic community, so that we can all talk to each other. To show them that we're not all big and scary or anything." On this topic, he lost his stumbling pattern of speech and grew more confident. He was proud of his family. Proud to be related to these low-bloods… and it shocked Vriska a little, made her jealous of him. How dare he, a lowly brown-blood, be proud of who he was, and who he was related to! Why should he have a better life than her, a cerulean-blood? "So, uh, what's your family like?"

"I have a bratty half-sister, a mum, and a dad who abandoned me before I was even born." she spat, tightening the bandages with a quick jerk that made him inhale sharply in pain. "But enough about me! You seem to be doing much better."

For reasons unknown to him, she lightly ran her finger up his bare spine, enjoying his shiver before handing him his top back. He quickly slid it on and tried (very unsuccessfully) to suppress the orange blush threatening to show on his face. Perhaps Vriska was enjoying the control she had over his poor emotions, or maybe she just liked messing with him… Both, Tavros decided in the end.

"Uh… t-thanks on behalf of my, uh, immune system?" he replied, stumbling over words again after Vriska's little stunt. Rather than look at her face, for he had turned back around to face her, he studied the grey on his arms intensely. The last thing he needed was to see the smirk twisting her pretty features.

Odd. The rate the grey was spreading over him was incredibly fast. Not four days had passed since they went into the underground village, and already the spread of grey was at the same rate as one would expect in four months. The blotches had mainly spread over his face and torso, with almost complete grey coverage there. The whites to his eyes were the vivid yellow that had come to be associated with the mutation, with the buds of his horns speeding into existence. As of yet, they had not caused him any problems, but within the next few hours he would begin to get the headaches that came with their growth. And as for his teeth, well, just that morning he had bitten the side of his mouth with his new, wickedly sharp canines. The rest of his teeth were getting pretty sharp as well, however that worked, with a vicious toothache plaguing him throughout the previous night, making him sleep particularly and unusually lightly.

It took a while for him to finally doze off, but when Tavros Nitram got to sleep, boy did he sleep heavily. You could probably fly an entire fleet of jet planes over his bedroom and not rouse him in the slightest. This, he did not mind, as he was prone to particularly weird and enjoyable dreams. It was an in-joke in his family how he preferred the dream-world to reality. But the toothache had kept him on the very borders of sleep, so the mere movement of Vriska going to the bathroom had woken him up. And yes, he was worried for her when she returned looking like she had seen a ghost… but he'd honestly not expected the problem to be periods. He could do nothing about that really. That was not a subject that guys liked to discuss. Like, whoa, no thanks.

From the far wall of the room, Sollux sat up and yawned. At first he just had a sleepy expression on, which one would expect having just woken up, but it soon turned sharp as his head whirled round to face Vriska.

"Hey, Vrithka, we need to talk."


	9. Do it Optic blasts

"Excuse me?" Vriska could only imagine what Sollux would want with her, and her guess was not only a good one, but accurate. Yet he was not angry as she would have expected, but rather apprehensive and very confused.

"You thaid that you have… weird powerth?"

"What?" she frowned, mock puzzled at his words. Okay, so she knew exactly what he meant, but delaying it was kind of fun. His expression was turning a little irritated as he too knew what she meant. But in addition to the teasing, there was also a part of her that did not want to accept it just yet, and she felt that not saying it to the full extent out loud would make it fake for just a while longer.

"You know what I mean. You thaid yesterday while feeding Tavroth-"

"Whoa, you, uh, make me sound completely incapable there."

"Shush!" both Vriska and Sollux said to the boy.

"Ath I wath thaying. You thaid that you could make him thit up. And yeth, I mean where one parkth their rear on a chair. That thit," They all allowed themselves a brief island of amusement from this Group Eight in-joke, before Sollux got back to the matter at hand. "Tho… what did you mean by that?"

Vriska beckoned Sollux over to the sit on the main bed, and so they formed an odd group, with Vriska and Tavros lying side by side, leaning on the headboard, and Sollux facing Vriska, leaning on the back-board of the four-poster.

"Okay, so yesterday, I lied."

"What?" Tavros gasped, annoyed and insulted that she had tricked him into eating the meat… but he still could not find it within him to hate her for it, or even any feelings near hate. It was the vegetarian in him, his mother would have teased, making him act so soppy.

"I couldn't make him sit up or anything at that time in _particular_. I just, I don't get it! It's hard to control," Vriska leant her head back further, staring up at the ceiling as if it would magically give her the answer to the problems she had been having. Then to calm herself down a little, she swept the main body of her hair over one shoulder and began to fiddle with the ends of it. "When I was really upset, or stressed or something, it was like… something would kind of click in my head, instructing me to do certain things."

She then slid her hands into her hair, cradling her head, and curled into a foetal position, her mane of hair hiding her face. It was stressful for her, these weird powers, despite how useful they could be because they were simply so alien to her.

Tavros slowly rested his hand on her shoulder, knowing that if he moved too fast he could startle her. At the moment she was an injured young animal: scared, jumpy and likely to lash out at any time. Indeed, when his palm made contact with her shoulder, she flinched and turned to look at him.

"Hey. It'll be fine." he smiled, reassuring her the best her could. Her cheeks turned a shade bluer as she uncurled, sitting with her legs out on the bed once more.

"Ugh, whatever. So yeah. It was first when that bloody woman, when we were getting our items checked, tried to bin most of my dice. I got pissed off at her and suddenly something in my head made me look her in the eyes and tell her what to do. So I did and it actually worked, and I don't know why, it's just, bluh," she looked up at Sollux and stared him in the eye. "See, if I tell you to do something now, it doesn't work. Sollux, stand up."

Suddenly, something in his eyes changed as his face turned slack and his eyes widened. As if possessed, his body swiveled from its position on the bed and indeed he stood up. At first, Vriska began to have in internal panic attack. Would she never be able to look people in the eye again without possessing them? Oh god, no! But then his arms raised in the air and he made loud groaning sounds like a zombie.

"Urrrrg, brainth…" he moaned.

"Oh fuck you, Sollux." she said, rolling her eyes with a small smile on her face.

"Ath you wish, my lady." Then with a smirk he joined her on the bed, straddling her and reaching for the front of her boiler suit with a suitably rapt expression.

"Jesus Christ, Sollux!" She kneed him in the groin and shoved him away, but was laughing none the less. "You men. You just can't help yourselves around me!"

"I believe I was pothethed and under your control."

"Yeah yeah. I think that really, my overriding womanly scent must have been affecting your poor mind," she sighed in mock exasperation, quoting the lines Sollux had used on her a few days ago. They allowed a smirk at one another before the conversation was steered to more serious matters once more. "So yeah. That's all there is to say on that matter really."

"Well, I'm thorry, but I'm not going to believe thith until I thee it."

Any humour in the atmosphere left as Vriska's expression turned stony. With an ironic smile she said, "Of course, because I'd totally lie about something like that!"

"Well come on. Being able to control peopleth mindth? It'th pretty far-fetched."

"You honestly think I'd look so disturbed about something I was lying about? Hell, that Tavros would freak out over what I was saying and eat meat despite his vegetarianism if he hadn't seen it and it was fake? Seriously?"

"Could be," Like Vriska, Sollux too turned serious and cold. "But until you prove it, I'm gonna athume you're lying. Fuck, maybe Tavroth ith in on it too."

"Tavros? Seriously? Come on, make believe time is over now," Vriska leant over a little and cupped Tavros's face in her hands, turning it to face to Sollux and ignoring how his cheeks were warming under her touch. "Look at this face. Could this possibly lie to you? Or anyone for that matter?"

"Get off," Tavros wriggled free of her grip, embarrassed at the attention. "And, uh, I can lie."

"Oh? Go on then. Lie for me, wriggler," Gosh, her teeth were sharp, he thought as her grin widened, making her look rather vampire like.

"Well, uh, anything I say, you're gonna know that it's a lie."

"Hmm, well pointed out."

"Vrithka, come on. Leave him out of thith."

Her gaze was sharp. "You didn't. Anyway. How about this. Tell me two truths and a lie. If you can smuggle the lie past me, then you win and you're apeshit banana's at lying. But if I pick out your lie then… well, you're not apeshit banana's at lying. Simple. I'll give you a minute to think them up."

And so the thinking began.

"Okay then… uh, so," Tavros composed himself before starting, "I have a cat, I have a computer and I don't have a bedroom door."

"You don't have a cat," Vriska said after a few seconds of thought, solving it. "It was a clever idea to use mundane things though. Very sneaky. I'll make a con artist of you yet. But jeez! You don't have a bedroom door?"

"Well, they removed it before I… uh, left because we were redecorating. Anyway, how, uh, how did you know so fast?"

"That midget Scottish girl's hat was covered in cat's hairs, and when she introduced herself to you, you sneezed and apologised, telling her it was from your allergies."

"You remembered that?"

"Hey, don't go all sentimental on me. I just remember pointless things. Anyway, what the hell? We've completely derailed here! Sollux! I'll prove to you that I can do this," She turned to him and stared him in the eyes, fingers at her temples and a lull to her voice, "Stand up."

But he did not stand.

"Stand up."

Again, he did not stand.

Frustrated at her lack of control, she broke off eye contact, shut her eyes and focused, searching deep inside her. Then suddenly, as if it made sense, her lids slowly opened once more as she calmly looked him in the eye.

"Stand up."

Sollux stood up. With a malicious grin, she instructed, "Fall over," And he fell. "Slap yourself around the face," And he slapped himself around the face. "Oh no, Sollux, looks like you were wrong."

"V-Vriska. Stop this."

She turned, not breaking off the connection, to see a horrified Tavros. "What? I'm not going to kill him. Just mess him about a bit. He insulted you as well!"

"Uh, yeah, I guess, but… just beating him up isn't the answer." He did not once look in her eyes, terrified that she might take it out on him as well.

"Any other zen quotes you'd like to shoot at me, or are we done here?" she snapped. "This is lame anyway."

Breaking off control, she turned once more to stare at the ceiling. It was then when a strange, ambient voice filled the room. They sounded like a woman, but it was hard to tell just what gender it was.

"This is an announcement from the head of this facility. So far groups Two, Five and Six have been annihilated, leaving seven groups for four spaces. A little under half of you will have to die yet before this is over.

'Information: each of the remaining groups must have killed another group before the end of this confinement. There will be no exception to this rule. If one of the final four groups has not killed another group, then they themselves will be eliminated. So far only groups Eight and Ten have killed. That is all."

From the inside of the observatory, Feferi pulled a grim expression, one matched by Vriska's.

"It would be that creep Eridan who murders someone, wouldn't it?" she chuckled. "Knew it."

Sollux, having finished taking in the words of the woman, heaved himself back up to his feet before settling back down again on the bed with a sigh.

"What? Is that it?" Vriska said. "You're not going to try and spear me or anything?"

"Nah," For Sollux knew that appeasing her violent side would not only end with his butt sorely kicked, but also that Vriska would get more out of him fighting back than if he remained dull. "Tho, then it ithn't too hard to believe that… well I gueth we owe you an apology Tavroth. I have noticed you find it hard to fall to thleep, tho I gueth, maybe the intruder hath weird mind control powerth ath well."

"Yeah, I had a hunch about that as well." Vriska admitted, much to the chagrin of her team mates.

"You mean you jutht let me be a complete dick to him for no reathon?" Sollux did not get overly theatrical with his emotions often, for that was Vriska's zone, but occationally it was needed. "You're a huge bitch."

"I didn't want to accept my own problems, dickhead, so I was keeping quiet about it." she pouted.

For a while Tavros felt a sense of accomplishment while Sollux glared at Vriska from behind his glasses, but he then stopped and continued the conversation, "Tho where I was going with thith ith that I think I may be getting thomething thimilar."

"And you still had the gall to accuse me of lying? Wow, thanks. Well I won't believe you, then, until you show us." she pouted, having soon forgotten the woman's words. They were relatively safe now, having murdered someone already. If they lay low they could get through relatively easy. It was a nasty business and a terrible thing to feel so relieved about, but in their situation, Vriska merely wanted to live.

"Thith could actually be dangerouth," Sollux warned, but Vriska was dismissive, telling him that as long as he did whatever this was in the opposite direction to them, they would be fine. And so he stood, and took off his dual-coloured glasses, holding them loosely by a handle with his eyes screwed shut. "Tho if you all die, or whatever, it'th your fault, Vrithka."

Turning his head towards a wall where a rather atrocious painting hung, he then opened his eyes, and two beams of energy shot out from them, one red, one blue. While this was going on, Vriska was vaguely aware of her mouth making noises like 'Holy fuck!' and 'Shit man, what the actual hell, Jesus!', but they were hardly conscious and she barely noticed them, in awe of the power this mustard blooded boy. The energy flowing from his eyes looked almost like jets of brightly coloured water, giving off a collectively purple coloured light that one could probably read by.

The painting caught fire and burned rapidly, giving off a thick, noxious, black smoke.

"Aw thit, I forgot about that. And yeth, I mean the expletive," The glasses went back on as quickly as possible as he left to get water. "Come on, Vrithka. We need to put thith out."

"See, Sollux? This is why we can't have nice things!" Vriska cried jokingly and also rushed to the bathroom for some water to put it out.

The smoke, dark, heavy and entirely visible began to sink down into the room, making Tavros choke and cough. But he could not move his legs, so he could not leave the room.

"Vriska! Shit, ugh…" he called. "Vriska!"

But he then descended into a mass of coughing and spluttering as the main body of smoke reached his face. Still there was no response, so he reached out to his side to grab the wheelie-chair and try to get onto it, yet he had no such luck, the chair scooting away from his fingers due to a misplaced lunge, and shooting across the room, leaving him in an awkward pile upon the floor. But he did not give up, because who knew how long it would take Sollux and Vriska to find a receptacle for water? They were incapable enough on their own, but with their powers combined, shit would undoubtedly go down.

The best he could come up with as a response to moving without legs (lousy goddamn stupid Vriska) was to do a strange, improvised army crawl across the floor. But the bloody painting was still spewing smoke into the room, the energy in Sollux's optic blasts, as they would later call them, was somehow allowing the combustion to last far longer than it should.

"Vriska…" he croaked, before the smoke descended further down the level of the wooden flooring, and Tavros blacked out.

* * *

**== > PSYCHE. Be Feferi before the murder**

You are now Feferi Peixes on the night before the murder, where we left off before

The water hung pleasingly around her body like a duvet, and it was such a comfort that Feferi lay at the bottom of the pool for a couple of hours. Had she known before that she had such an affinity for the water – being able to breathe in it nonetheless – she would have gotten a pool installed at their flat, or at least organized a holiday to some remote island so they could go diving. Being a princess of sorts came with such privileges. Actually, wait... a horrifying thought flittered through her mind: what if her gills were only adapted for freshwater? One of her dreams upon discovering this mutation a day or so ago was to explore some of the sunken cities of old, all encased within saltwater. But hey, she should be content with having gills and lungs to start with! So enough of this moping!

Outside, nothing was visible due to night falling, turning the vast windows into mirrors, all showing the same slightly plump girl with a mess of dark hair climbing out of a pool. The plump girl, of course, being Feferi. Now outside the warm water, she was freezing and soon realized her error at not thinking of towels and the like. She couldn't very well put on her dry clothes on top of the wet ones, that would just be plain stupid, so instead she scuttled into the nearest bedroom and wrapped herself up in some spare bed sheets until she was dry. Next time, she would make sure to bring a towel... if there were any around here that is.

Because of this, she decided to spend the next couple of minutes seeing if she could find any of these elusive towels, as she could see herself spending much time in the pool sized bath getting used to her gills. Also because she did not want to face a certain teammate quite yet. A bit of planning was needed before such a route would be taken.

After searching through countless airing cupboards and closets, she still could not locate any towels, although she found many more bed sheets. Honestly, who built a pool, but forgot towels? Sheesh. In fact, at first it had enraged her so much that she had taken her trident and shredded several of the bed sheets in a fit of rage, not to mention a few vases. One of the walls in a spare bedroom had been gouged, even. A credit to whomever had made the trident that it could cut plaster.

Then again, Feferi scolded herself, she had been given a safe house for Group Ten, with food and the near guarantee that they would not be killed. A lack in towels was hardly something to be complaining about. Imagine how it was for all those other poor people; having to hide the best they could and hunt or scavenge for food, even! Some had died already, and others inured beyond hope of repair. They, however, were living on the lap of luxury. Yeah, she definitely had no right to complain about a mere lack of towels.

Well, it was pretty clear that Feferi had no hope of finding these towels, so with a sigh, she conceded defeat and placed a small pile of spare bed sheets in the bathroom with the pool-bath. Although she dreaded it, she thought, ' _Well that's all I can do here. Time to go face the music_.'

As silently as possible, she crept up the spiral staircase, deciding upon which tactics to get Eridan to forgive her... not that she had really done anything wrong in her opinion. If showing people their amazing hidden skills was wrong, then hell, she did not want to be right. Feferi knocked their code knock on the wood of the trapdoor and Kanaya swung it open, silhouetted into a dark shape by the moon overhead, making her only recognizable by her characteristic tufted hairstyle.

"I was wondering where you had gotten to, Feferi. I checked the pool but you were not there." Kanaya said.

"Oh," Feferi whispered, seeing that the hipster was asleep and not wanting to wake him... yet. "Sorry! I went to go dry off, but I couldn't find any coddamn towels, so I had to improvise."

"Yes, I saw the trail of footsteps," Kanaya smiled. "So that is what I assumed you were doing. Anyway, now that you have joined us, you can take your shift. Today, you have got the first half of the night, and I the second. Well, I am going to sleep now. Goodnight."

The Russian girl settled down at the opposite side of the observatory, drawing the nest of sheets and pillows around her before drifting off to sleep. Ugh, guard duty was super boring, Feferi decided, while dragging the heavier items in the glass dome across the trap door and making sure that the Arab's Cross-stitch, ahem, Ahabs Crosshair was in place and ready to be fired if necessary. At least she got the view of the gardens, which looked particularly beautiful at night.

Feferi swept her gaze across the expanse of moonlit lawns before beginning her plan to get on Eridan's good side once more. A smirk lit up her face, almost sadistic in nature, as she lifted up the bedcovers and slid in behind him, wrapping her arms around his torso and pressing her face into his back, just between the shoulder-blades. Clear as daylight, she felt him flinch and stiffen, but as she rubbed small circles onto his side with her thumb, he soon relaxed once more. For Feferi this was completely platonic in origin, although those coddarn voices brought on by puberty were whispering things in her mind that made her blush a fine pinky-purple.

"Hey," she murmured into the dark fabric of his vest, trying to distract her mind from its racy suggestions. "You're not still mad at me, are you?"

"You knoww full wwhale it's hard to when you're like this, Fef," And although she could not see the smile on his face as he said it, Feferi could certainly hear it in his voice. "But seriously, you almost made me hawe a heart attack wwhen you jus' sat on the bottom of the pool wwitrout movin'."

"Aww, you worry too much, Mr grumpy-gills! You know what else you know full 'wwhale'? That I'm not a complete dummy! It's pretty shrimple really."

"Wwell that's disputable, don't you think?" he teased, earning him a playful cuff around the back of the head before Feferi settled back down again so that they were in the double s shape they were in before. "Pretty shrimple? Hawen't heard that one before, princess."

"Seriously, though. See? No more fish puns. I am sorry that I made you so upset. I just thought it would be easier to show you." Feferi sighed, her piece-de resistance about to be unveiled. But on second thoughts, it could be hamming it up a little too much, and she definitely did not want for that to happen; that was Eridans job… the hamming it up that is.

"Aren't you supposed to be lookin' out or somethin'?"

"Aren't you supposed to be sleeping with the fishies, mister?" she retorted with a grin. Ah, yes, it was nice when he was not being grumpy at her. She would not need to use the final stage of her plan.

"Touché, Fef. But it's kinda hard gettin' to sleep wwith you distractin' me," Eridan smirked. "Anywways, 'sleepin' wwith the fishes' is more like murderin' someone than actually sleepin'."

"Aw, but I was frond of that one!" Feferi pouted. "But yes, I probably should be keeping watch... but you're so warm!" As if this needed reinforcing, she gave him a quick squeeze.

"Yeah, if I die, Fef, I'll hawe to bream it on you. Not that I don't appreciate your company, or anythin'."

"Urgh, fine." she grunted, placed a quick kiss on the ridge of his spine, before she heaved herself from the covers to sit on the chair in the centre of the room with the best vantage point.

Halfway into the night, judged entirely by the position of the fake moon in the sky, Feferi gave Kanaya's shoulder a gentle shake to wake her, and she then took over the guard duty. Feferi slid back into Eridan's nest-bed and resumed the position she had been in before –hugging him from behind. But no sooner had she done this, Eridan, still half asleep, rolled over, told her to turn over (which she did, although fairly confused) and then took the position she had previously been in. That is to say, hugging her from behind, as he muttered, "I don' wwanna be the little spoon again."

Feferi merely giggled before an idea struck her.

"Hey, Eridan, do you think you could sing the lullaby?"

"Huh? Oh, sure, Fef." He cleared his throat before beginning to sing quietly, his mouth right next to her ear, so he barely needed to raise his voice. It was an old song that Eridan's father had sung to them when they were young, and the Russian words in Eridan's low wavy voice calmed her instantly, her eyelids drooping after a few seconds of the lyrics. However, being half asleep, the Russian lines soon morphed into the exact reasons as to why Eridan disliked potato salad in English, making Feferi giggle once more before settling down to sleep.

The next morning, Kanaya's suggestively raised eyebrows and 'hint-hint what were you two _up_ to last night?' coughing aside, was especially pretty. The lack of shampoo she had used on her wet hair had made it extra frizzy, though, and it gave her the impression of a dark haired lion's mane. Eridan was practically drowning in hair when they awoke, and her locks had dried off. He was spluttering and clawing hair off his tongue for a good few seconds after waking.

Breakfast was a lengthy affair, with none of the fear and barely suppressed hunger that many of the other groups would be feeling, due to their safety. Feferi, for example, had two tins of peaches with a scoop of ice-cream for good measure. Yes. Ice-cream! Christ, they were living the high-life compared to Vriska and her team! Coddamn fucking ice-cream. Fuck yes. Hell fucking yes. But okay, whoa. We all need to settle down here.

After they ate, Kanaya, as usual, took out her sewing equipment and began to work on her tailoring.

"I think you would suit blues and greens, Feferi. Anything brightly coloured." She would often smile. And when asked what she was making, she would give an elusive smile and not answer. Whatever it was, it was large and made of a rich purple fabric. After the first day, Eridan and Kanaya got on fairly well, and often when Feferi would return from one of her walks around the grounds, they would fall silent as if discussing something to do with her. Hmm… suspicious. Very suspicious. They were lucky that she trusted them not to be bitching about her behind her back, or there would be hell to pay. For Feferi may look generally tame, but she could be a vicious girl when she wanted to.

Each morning after breakfast, Feferi would go for a stroll around the perimeter of their refuge, partially for intruders, and partially to escape from the cloying atmosphere of their situation. Trident in hand, she set off, lifting the trap-door up and floating down the spiral staircase… okay, so maybe she did not _float_ down the stairs, per se, but she was still fairly graceful, as a princess should be. Wait, no. None of this high-bloods are better nonsense. Eridan was rubbing off on her, and that was the exact opposite of what should be going on. Arg, all that stuff going through her mind last night…

As she reached the doors, deep in thought on Eridan's decent into snobbery, a male voice cried out, "Wwait, Fef!"

She turned, not too surprised to see Eridan behind her since he was the only guy in their vast mansion. Damn, after last night she kind of wanted to think things over a bit, but she could not exactly shake him off.

"Mind if I join?" he asked.

"No," she replied, but inside she was thinking, ' _Well I cannot exactly say_ yes, _can I_?'. "But I'll warn you now, I'm not going to be any fun. Just thinking and stuff."

"Oh." Wow, had he actually picked up on her subtle hint?

"'Oh' what?"

"Wwell, don't feel you have to wwalk wwith me. I'll be fine on my owwn."

Feferi so desperately wanted to think about things, that she agreed with him, and so they parted ways. He looked a little down trodden at this, but she was already lost in thought by the time he split off.

They had always slept in the manner they had last night: curled up together. It would be weird to sleep without Eridan's comforting mass nearby for Feferi. But as of late it had been getting more and more awkward, as expected really. Hell, she was not stupid. Feferi knew exactly why this was, but she did not want to accept it. They were growing up, and both members were finding the other increasingly attractive… or at least she was. Eridan probably still saw her as a sister, knowing him. Far too busy to think about romance, no doubt. Yes, she would have to stop thinking about him in that way. Imagine if they did date, and they then broke up… it would be the most awkward thing afterwards. No, she could not handle a life without him, as he was so central to her, so even just as a friend, this is how it would go:

An official ban on any romance related thoughts about Eridan. There would be no dating of Eridan. No fly zone. Done.

Besides, it was one thing being his friend/sister with all his quirks, but being his _girlfriend_ with all those? She then proceeded to think about his quirks.

Although very controversial, there was much speculation about whether the higher up the hemospectrum you are, you more violent you turn out to be. This was certainly the case with indigo bloods, where they had to have certain drugs to keep them from 'flipping out'. For most, this was just an urban legend, or a rumor whispered between school friends, but when Feferi asked, Feferi got… well, before the mutation business that is. She sincerely hoped that there were not any indigo bloods here, as that would be pretty coddamn awful for them.

But enough of the meandering, the reason she was thinking this was in reference to her morail and his ever worsening temperament. A combination of the aggression in the blood, and the fame were making him act like a bit of an asshole. Moments like the night before had been getting further and further spaced as the fame increasingly went to his head. Just knowing him was getting more and more stressful as he grew arrogant and possessive of her. Thankfully, he still had his sweet moments, and if not for those she would have clocked him around the head a long time ago. Seriously, though. When she got back from this, she would have another talk on the matter of the subtle genocide hints. They were royalty, and they were idols. Wanting to kill people would not do for people in their position. They had responsibilities! And besides, she loved him like a brother (that is what it was, totally, no other feelings than sisterly affection, no sir), and you don't let those you love do stupid, reckless things. Like killing people. That was pretty stupid.

But this aggression was working its way into her head as well. Recently, the littlest things were making her flip out, like the lack of towels as one example. She had destroyed that guest room, and had come out feeling ashamed, but a hell of a lot better. It horrified her.

Feferi twirled the double-ended trident between her fingers like a baton, the concentration it took ebbing her anger away. She had hoped that the water would calm her, and indeed it did for a while, but it could not keep it back for long. She would have to find a more long term solution than randomly destroying stuff, so until then she would try and soak in the pool.

So far, she had not come across anyone on these walks, but hey, there's always a first. Although how they could climb over the three metre walls with coils of electrified barbed wire toping it… she had not a clue.

" _AAAAURGGGH_!" The yell filled the air… an oddly familiar voice and adrenaline shot through her veins.

"Eridan," she muttered, and sped towards the source of the scream, the trident in an attack ready hold. " _Eridan_?"

Thankfully, the open lawns made it hard for anyone to hide themselves, and so she soon spotted the intruder. In the distance she could see someone running, a vast plume of fabric billowing out behind him – Eridan. And behind him, someone else. Someone lithe and quick.

" _Eridan_!" she cried, before letting out a scream of fury as he fell, something sticking out of his back. "Back off!"

This gave her another boost of energy as she sped forwards, arms pumping back and forwards to help her gain momentum. Damn it, why couldn't she go faster? The intruder kicked Eridan in the ribs, and she could hear his howl of pain from where she was several metres away.

Feferi roared in anger and leapt towards the intruder, smacking the trident in an arc towards their head, knocking off their headgear and allowing a mane of hair to tumble free. The intruder snarled and ripped the knife from where it lay embedded in Eridan, making him whimper, before whirling it in her hand, cutting Feferi a notch in her collarbone. In response, the idol thrust the trident forwards and stabbed the girl in the arm, leaving behind a three piece wound. But she quickly realized that a long range weapon had its limits in a knife fight, and so she would have to keep this intruder girl at tridents length.

They then began their dance; Feferi trying to keep her at a far enough distance to hit with the tridents knives, and the intruder trying to get close enough to cut deeper wounds, but Feferi had the slight edge and managed to gouge her in the leg, stopping her from dodging quite so agilely a minute in.

"Enough," The intruder spat now she could no longer fight that way, and limped back towards Eridan, hoisting him up by the scarf and holding the knife at his throat. "I'm done playing fair. Try that again, bitch, and this weirdo gets it, and you'll _all_ die."

The light in her eyes made it clear that she would indeed slice Eridan's throat open if Feferi made another movement, and so the royal-blood stood her ground, still wielding the trident in her hand in case an opening revealed itself to her. The aggressive attitude could defiantly be explained by the indigo blood leaking from the intruder girl's wounds, yet desperation could also have caused it. There were other wounds from before their scuffle, probably caused from the barbed wire… although that did not explain the electricity.

"So. This is nice. We can talk like civilized people," the indigo-blood smirked, her flaming red hair shifting over her shoulders as she moved. "I'll agree to let Eridan go, if you let my person go. Zankuo."

"What? Is that what this is about? We haven't got anyone!"

"Don't play cute with me, princess," At this Feferi flinched as only Eridan really called her 'princess', and he was lying on the floor with multiple stab wounds. "Your group has really fucked up mine. First, you sliced off Turiox's hand, and now you've kidnapped Zankuo. Well. I'm not going to allow that. Group Five is not going down," As if to reinforce this, she dug the tip of her boot into one of Eridan's wounds, making him scream and scream as she laughed, a rapt expression on her face. "Oh my, I could listen to that all day. Honey, you really should just fall unconscious already."

The girl then gave him another kick before her wild, grey-eyed gaze settled upon Feferi, or rather her stomach. "So. Is what they said about you being knocked up true?" Oh god, a FefEridan follower.

At her question, well, if she was not in fear of Eridan's life, and as a result her own she would have laughed aloud, or perhaps cried… she was not sure which. Bloody shipping. The girl before her was a typical textbook definition of an indigo blood: the violent mood-swings between normal and sadistic.

"Seriously? We're thirteen! I haven't even started my fucking periods yet!" Okay, maybe she could do a _little_ bit of screeching. The rumors had really gotten to her, and for the first few days after they had began to spread through the tabloids, Feferi had holed up in her room with only ice-cream and a box-set of documentaries on the oceans for company.

"Well, maybe there's a reason for that?" she replied with a small, suggestive smirk. "Hey, seriously, I'm sorry for this. I kinda get into the fight a bit too much. And any other time I would be asking for your autograph, I mean, holy shit, you're Feferi Peixes!" Wow, she was a… fangirl? Hmm, Feferi could use this.

"Uh… well."

"And, oh man. Are you two actually an item? As in dating and shit? Because I've heard these rumors and… no… what the hell am I doing?" The girl shook her head, as if clearing her mind of these distracting thoughts, and clearing the way for those more befitting for murdering her idols. Yet before she could do this, Feferi lunged forwards with the trident and stabbed her in the stomach, twisting it before yanking it out, the intruder tumbling to the ground.

"Bitch!" the girl chuckled. "You actual _bitch_! Stabbing a fan? Wow. So you know… you know what?"

The knife still in hand, she sliced out the knife in a practiced motion and stabbed Feferi through the foot, fixing her to the ground. The purple-blood screamed, falling on one knee as she sobbed in pain, hands flailing wildly around the handle, not sure what exactly to do.

"Try getting stabbed in the gut," the girl sighed before she pushed herself to her feet and pulled another knife from her belt, arm clutched around her midriff to stem the bleeding the best she could, and hold in any organs threatening to jump-ship. "If Group Five is gonna go down, then so is yours."

Feferi barely took this in, still staring at disbelief at her foot. The intruder staggered behind her, knife raised high… and a bolt of energy sailed past Feferi's ear, skimming off the girls arm and turning it into fluid.

With a curse, Kanaya raised the Ahab's Crosshairs once more, hoping for a better shot the next time round. But it was doubtful she would have another shot. By now the intruder had already accepted that she would die, and was determined to bring Feferi down with her, and so raised the knife again.

Now knowing the girl was prepared to stab her with her dying breath, Feferi, cool and collected, picked the trident back up and with a quick twist of the body, jabbed one of the outlying prongs into the base of the girls ribs and upwards until she reached the heart, a spray of indigo catching her in the face and staining her boiler suit. The intruder coughed up a small amount of blood and fell forward onto the trident. She had died.

After a few seconds, the yellow-blood with only one hand, the one whom Kanaya had carved with her chainsaw, suddenly screamed as his body filled with a buzzing pain before he collapsed and seemed to sink through the floor, the ground absorbing his body leaving no trace. Simultaneously, a blue-blood being carried by another muscled blue-blood shrieked the calls of a dying man all of a sudden, making Equius, the carrier, drop him in a nearby garden before dashing off, worried people would be attracted to him by the noise. This blue-blood also died soon after. Group Five were gone, making the count of downed groups a grand total of three from ten.

Dropping the Ahab's Crosshairs to the ground, Kanaya rushed towards the fallen duo, Feferi looking a great deal worse now covered in indigo blood to join her own soaking through the materiel.

"Shoosh shoosh shoooooosh," Kanaya crooned as she stroked the hair from Feferi's face. "Don't look. I'm going to count down from three, and I'm going to pull it out-"

"No no no! D-don't tell m-m-me, just pull it. Get it out, _get it out_!" Feferi sobbed, cursing as soon as Kanaya's fingers so much as touched the handle of the knife in her foot. Putting a piece of fabric between Feferi's teeth to stop her from biting her tongue, Kanaya made a quick mental countdown and ripped the knife from the ground and foot, swearing when she realized the soil from the ground would likely infect the wound. "Owwww! Aurgh!"

"It's all okay, now. Don't worry, Feferi. You're going to be fine." Kanaya then turned to where Eridan lay, looking for all purposes like a harpooned whale with the knife sticking out from his side. Already, Feferi was limping over to where Eridan lay, batting off Kanaya's mothering feebly and inspecting her morails wounds. He had been stabbed in his side and in the back, as well as the odd slice on his legs. This girl had not been beating around the bush, she had meant to kill.

Well, Feferi did not need to be a doctor to tell that Eridan was pretty much stuffed as far as living a long and healthy life went.

"Eridan? Eridan? Are you still… still awake?" Feferi was going to say alive, and it was clear to all those around her, but she did not.

"Fef?"

"Don't worry," she whispered, repeating the words of Kanaya just a while before. "You're gonna be fine, Eridan. You're not going to jump ship, okay? And see? You know everything's shrimply fine because the puns are still there."

"I can see somethin'… somethin' shiny." he mumbled, looking upwards at the fake sky.

At this the fish-girl choked back a sob. He was going delusional before his death. Perhaps due to the loss of blood? Yet Kanaya followed his gaze and frowned.

"Of course, Eridan." Feferi stroked the purple highlight in his hair.

"He is correct, Feferi."

She turned, and indeed there was a small shiney object tumbling to the ground. It landed just before them, and she saw that it was a small round container. Unscrewing it, she found a tub of salve and a note.

'Sew up wounds then apply three times a day.'

With a relieved smirk, the kind that only those that have dodged death can appreciate, Kanaya commented, "They really cannot allow you to die, can they? But come, we are not out of the fire just yet. We need to stitch these wounds up."

* * *

Your name is Eridan Ampora,

In recent months you've been developing an overpowering GENOCIDE COMPLEX, but you are keeping it on the low until you have figured out exactly whom it is you want to kill. All those without purple blood flowing through their veins? Haven't had much luck with that, but maybe tonight's your night.

You hold a fascination for MILITARY HISTORY AND LEGENDARY CONQUERORS. You have dubiously modelled your profile and exploits after the most notorious figures and their stories. It is an image you are careful to craft through EXAGGERATED EMOTIONAL THEATRICS, and your penchant for mass murder notwithstanding, the general public tends to regard you as a BIT OF A TOOL.

You also like MAGIC, even though you know it to be FAKE. Like a made up friend, the way wizards are. Made up make believe FAKEY FAKEY FAKES. It's still fun though.

Recently, you found yourself in the odd predicament of turning GREY, which was made odder by your long time PLATONIC SOUL-MATE THING going grey at the same time. You both attempted to HIDE FROM THE MEDIA, but they assumed you had got your aforementioned PLATONIC SOUL-MATE THING PREGNANT, which made things super awkward, so you CAME CLEAN. You're both only thirteen anyway! Sheesh.

Lousy goddamn stupid radiation.


	10. 5x point of view combo

The stitching of the wounds took about ten minutes as Kanaya pushed the needle through Eridan's skin in neat little lines, with Feferi holding his hand and stroking his face to distract him from the pain. Kanaya told him that he was lucky, that the first stab had avoided his organs by a massive stroke of luck… but the second had gotten him in the kidney by the looks of it. Somehow, he stayed awake, pain written across his face as the metal pierced his skin and the thread was drawn through.

Once she had sewn up the stab wounds on his sides, Kanaya dipped her fingers into the salve and applied it to the wounds generously, noting the immediate relaxing of his face as the balm eased Eridan's pain. The salve seemed to fizz slightly as it made contact with his wounds, and both females quickly realised why: nanobots.

"They've spared _nanobots_ for him?" Feferi gasped, although they both knew why they had. He was royalty for a start, but also there was the glaring fact that if he died, Feferi died too, and they could not allow that. Feferi Peixes, against all odds, was going to survive. And there was nothing anyone could do about that. Well. The girl was not about to complain… but then it did leave the other candidates a little out of luck. Even Vriska, despite her claims of having 'all the luck'. _Please_.

Waves of pity washed over Kanaya, however, as she thought of the other teams. While she was prepared to severely injure and quite possibly kill when it came to it, she could not say she took particular pleasure from it, or at least not if she had not been previously provoked.

Once Eridan was done, they moved back up to the observatory, wanting the safety that came with it while they licked their wounds and recovered.

Yet while she unravelled another lot of thread from her spools, preparing to sew up Feferi, a voice echoed around the room, telling them how they would need to kill someone before they could advance onwards in safety. Feferi's expression was hard at the woman's words, but she seemed to be holding up well. As long as she did not have a mental breakdown, they would be fine. Kanaya gave her a comforting pat on the knee before ordering to see her foot. It was now time for Feferi's stitching…

* * *

**== > Be the blind chick**

You are now Terezi Pyrope, and an insensitive dumbass for calling her that. Gosh

The first twenty-four hours of the blindness was the worst, and after waking without vision spent the remainder of the day walking into things and scraping her palms and knees. The following day was not spectacular either. And after the announcement from the head of T.R.O.L.L, Terezi was all for smashing her head into a wall.

Karkat and Gamzee had left her alone, for they could tell that she needed to just sit with her thoughts for a bit. Honestly, for a couple of minutes she sobbed into her palms, not wanting to accept her blindness, or how either Gamzee or Karkat were going to have to kill someone, because hell if she was going to do anything in this state.

' _Terezi_?' a voice whispered, sounding as if they were right behind her. The girl bolted upright, confused at the word she had just head.

"Hello? Who are you?"

' _Hello, my lovely_!' Oh, it was her mum. No one else called her 'lovely'… although how the heck she was talking to her inside her mind, she had not the foggiest. ' _Try and speak in your head though, flower, else wise all of your friends will think you quite insane_.'

' _What, like this_?'

' _Yes. Exactly like that, lovely. Now then. I've been trying to get through to you for quite a while now in your sleep, but it seems that someone has been blocking me? Anyway, I'm speaking to you now and that is what counts_ ,' As always, her mother spoke in an exited tone of voice as if conveying the new found cure for aging. ' _How are you_?'

' _I'm blind now. Someone poured some chemicals in my eyes while I slept_.' Terezi tried to think bluntly, but the mind is a tricky thing, and although her words (or thoughts rather) were emotionless, an entire plethora of emotions were transmitted to her mum that showed just how stressed and upset she was feeling.

' _Oh Tezzi_!' she cried, using the pet name she had given to her daughter when she was a baby, and a wave of soothing feelings passed through the girl, almost as good as a hug.

' _How are you even speaking like this to me anyway_?' Terezi asked, as she probably should have a while ago. ' _Are you a mutant too_?'

' _Yes. But mine is not obvious in the same way that your mutation is. I'm telepathic_.'

' _I think I'd worked that bit out, mum, he he_.'

' _Don't you use that tone of thought at me, Terezi! Right then. We need to get you back to your old strength. I'm going to teach you how to smell and taste colours_.' And although initially apprehensive, because heck, who can smell colours, Terezi indeed learnt how to smell them. It was probably the weirdest thing she had learnt to do, and when Karkat popped in to check up on her, he thought she looked insane, sniffing objects and then saying colours aloud. Or even weirder, once her mother instructed her how to taste them.

This process involved licking objects for maximum clarity, which Terezi disliked at first… until she found out about the wealth of colours that she discovered. The vivid candy apple of reds! The grossness of green apple sours! The smooth chocolate milkshake of brown! Wow, she had been missing out big time here. Why had her mother not taught her this before?

' _Do you think you have it now, sweetie_?' her mum said after the four hour long tutorial. ' _It's a trait you inherited, so it shouldn't be too hard for you to learn, my lovely_.'

It was just turning dark when Terezi ended the tutorial, and she could smell the vivid orange creamsicle of the sky from where she stood at the window, with the odd dash of purple ribena juice as the clouds. In the centre of this, hidden just behind peach squash roofs was an orb of pale, banana yellow – the sun.

With a soft click, the door opened once more as Karkat and Gamzee came in. Terezi flicked her tongue over her red glasses, revelling in the taste of candy-apples before sliding them over her destroyed eyes, covering red with red.

"Hey, sis, how are your motherfucking eyes?" Gamzee asked, a concerned look on his face, not that Terezi could tell using only her scent… and she was not about to lick him just to tell that!

"Still blind. But I don't need to worry about that anymore, he he," With a grin, she added, "Pick up something, and I'll tell you what it is. And stop giving each other that look."

In reality, she could not quite see their expressions, but from their general body language, and the way that Gamzee and Karkat turned to each other after her words, she was able to effectively guess what they were doing. Shrugging, they then each picked up an item: Karkat, his two scythes, and Gamzee, a tin of tomato soup. She instructed them to hold the items out in front of her, and she then gave the air a long, slow sniff.

"Karkat, you've got your dumb scythes, and Gamzee some… uh, a red tin?" She grabbed it from him, and licked over the label. "Soup. Tomato."

"The fuck, Terezi?" Karkat exclaimed. "How are you doing that?"

In response, she merely tapped the side of her nose with one long finger while grinning maddeningly.

"Now then. We have work to do. We need to all get weapons, and we need to murder someone, unfortunately."

"Hey, who's the fucking leader here? Guess what, and, like, get the press on this, because it's not you, Terezi. It's me. So I'll be doing the ordering about."

"You're so cute when you think that'll actually work, Karkles!" she cackled, pinching his cheek with a disturbing amount of accuracy.

While she could now see a hell of a lot more than she could before, Terezi's vision, or scent, was still not perfect, and so it was decided that until she was fully able to pick up moving objects in the dark she would not keep watch.

The next morning, Gamzee came up to her during an interesting breakfast of greenery from their garden with a cane in his hands. It was a strange device that split into three attached segments. Terezi hadn't a clue how that could be used in battle, but hey, whatever. It was still nice of Gamzee to find it for her, and so she have him another pat on the head. He had very nice hair for a stoner.

Despite the hunger that filled their bodies as readily as a virus, Terezi and Karkat sparred after breakfast. Canekind versus scythekind. Despite how Karkat had twice as many weapons as she did, and both of which sharp, she managed to beat him. Whether it was due to just his terrible skills with the scythe, or the fact that Terezi had attended fighting classes with Vriska for several years, it was uncertain. Loosing to a (pretty much) blind girl? Wow he had some work to do. But what they both knew for certain is that if someone broke in, it would probably be Gamzee that would do most of the fighting.

It was a worrying transformation, that of the lax stoner into that of a violent sadist. Both had heard the rumours of the lurid liathdaonna, of those mutants so violent that they tended to destroy themselves before they were even born. Besides, it was said that the indigo bloods could also have genes related those particular mutants… and, well, Gamzee was quite clearly an indigo-blood. So far, they had not seen him completely lose control, although he was definitely not the same boy that had sung songs about cockatoos to Karkat on the plane ride down to New Mexico, accompanied only by the tapping of his finger-nails, and the occasional honk from some weird clown horn, the item he had intended to take, but had left behind on the plane.

"Well, motherfuckers, I'm off to go look for some more motherfucking food. Look after Karkat will you, Terezi?" Gamzee winked before heading out. Quite besides the bat-like ears they had all received, Terezi's hearing had also improved since the loss of her sight, and so she heard the Aussie mutter something under his breath as he descended downstairs. "Although it'll be a fucking miracle if I find anything."

As soon as they heard the click of the door, Terezi turned back to Karkat with a big grin on her face. "Come on, crabbyface. We need to get you trained up in case anyone finds us here."

* * *

**== > Be Group One**

You cannot be Group One, for we do not know anything about them. But you can be a sort of creepy stalker like narrative following them around. You are now a creepy stalker like narrative following Group One around.

If there was one thing Group One were full of, other than themselves for some odd reason, it was an unhealthy mixture of bravado and brains. The leader of their team was a slight girl of the name Yuuqui Verita, who had been a fifteen year old chemistry prodigy prior her mutation. It had not only taken everything away from her, but landed her in a group supplemented with a pair of womanising dumbasses that had no qualms about trying to hit on members of the opposing teams. This had supplied her with a disturbing lack of empathy for her fellow human beings, and so she hadn't any issues with the killing and maiming of others. The brawn of their team were both American football players with buzz cuts and a ridiculous amount of muscle on their arms. And yet, after one of them had tried slapping some poor thirteen year old on the butt, her team mate, an oddly… well, not slender, per se, but certainly not a bulky looking young boy, had hit him back so hard he ended up being thrown across the central plaza, dislocating his arm. It hadn't been a great day for Group One, needless to say, and because of this, the boy, Lenuit, had formed a grudge against what they found to be called Group Seven; in particular Equius Zahhak.

When the woman had announced that they would all have to kill at least one other mutant before their team would be allowed to survive, Lenuit knew just which group he wanted to target. But before they could do that, they had to finish their current business, which was taking over control of the shop from the foolish Group Three. Sure, the third group had control over almost all of the provisions for the game, which brought them a degree of security, but that made them a delicious target. And that was something that Group One just could not resist.

With the strength of Lenuit and Essair controlled and distilled into a flawless action plan by Yuuqui, Group Three had not stood a chance and were quickly defeated by two snapped necks and a punctured lung. Although the boy with the punctured lung disintegrated due to the death of his team mates before he could actually die on his own terms. They allowed themselves a brief feast before packing up anything useful and hauling it off to their shelter, with Lenuit and Essair as pack horses.

Yuuqui provided a brief motivational speech on how they were going so far, and what they would need to do next to ensure the best chances of survival before leaving for her lair once more. The next day, she laid out the plans for their removal of Group Four. One of them had insulted her while they were being sorted into groups, and her twisted purple-blooded mind wanted revenge. The kind of revenge that ended in deaths.

From what she could gather from the third group before they were silenced, they were in a sort of partnership with Group Four, with the fourth group shooting any who tried to get into the shop. Well, lucky they had snuck in under the cover of darkness then. They had been doing a lot of that, sneaking around in the dark, getting the low down on the other teams and causing a bit of havoc. Just a day or so prior, Yuuqui had found the shelter of Group Nine and blinded someone in their team. As they had not done anything in particular against her, she decided to be merciful and let them live with only a warning. Besides, one of the guys in their group was cute.

Unlike Three, Group Four had proved to be somewhat more challenging with one member handy with a rifle, and another with a vicious spear. Except that the spear snapped in half easily after it was lodged in the wielder's chest, and although one bullet clipped of half of Essair's ear, a similar bullet clipped of half of the rifle-wielder's cranium. It was only fair, after all, that the strongest survived, no?

Their goods were collected, and another group was officially slashed from the list of survivors. Now, there were only five groups. One more would have to be destroyed, but even if that occurred then only three could pass through to the next stage of the T.R.O.L.L facility, as each group must have murdered at least one other group…

Well, Yuuqui was done with the brawn of the group for the evening, and so the brawn were free to do what they wished. Each picked up a club and headed for the door. Essair and Lenuit had taken down the easy prey, and now wished for something with a little more… bite.

She was okay with that. The moronic duo made a lot of noise, so it was good to let them out now and again, to let off steam and what not. Besides, Yuuqui needed to work.

It was known that occasionally children were just born with twisted personalities. Yuuqui Verita was one of these children. It was simply the way she was, and although if she'd had amazing parents that worked hard on turning her into a decent member of society, she could have turned out to be a nice person, but the fact was that her family were snobs meant that the time of reform was too late. Having been home schooled by her parents from birth, essentially, she had never really had much in the way of contact with anyone her own age. Then, there was the fact that she was of the same blood caste as Eridan Ampora, and so she should have been able to afford anything her little heart desired… but that was one thing she would not have, as her parents had denied her this inheritance as it was deemed 'character building', not until she was eighteen anyway. Since she would be living with her parents until this age anyway, most could not see the problem with this. But her friends, all other purple-bloods only fuelled her opinion that this was a great injustice by going on vast shopping sprees every other weekend which she could not attend, lest she get jealous and smash something. So when someone did something that annoyed her, the grudge was held until she rectified their action with something of a worse nature.

Being a chemist, Yuuqui knew a fair amount about making things go BOOM. And from what she had gathered from the mutterings of an asleep Terezi, Vriska had a love for a certain object, and what luck Yuuqui had! Just the other day she had stumbled across one in the attic, and so with a few minor alterations, the trap was set.

Vriska, well Group Eight really, had stolen a certain house from her clutches. Damn. It would have been the perfect shelter from them and they had been planning to sneak in, back when they were not so comfortable about murder, but Vriska had gotten there first. Well, Yuuqui would not let such a thing slip.

With a grin, she slid out of the door and disappeared into the night. She had an important package to deliver.

* * *

**== > OH MY GOD what even happened to Tavros? Be him**

You cannot be Tavros Nitram, for he is unconscious

**== > Fine. Then Vriska, hurry up with the bucket filling already so you can swoop in to Tavros's aid**

You guess you can acquiesce to that, although… there is something incredibly awkward about buckets all of a sudden…

**== > People are dying. YOU FILL THAT BUCKET THIS INSTANT**

You are now Vriska Serket and you are filling that bucket this instant

Someone was calling her, she was certain of it, but it was all but drowned out over the sound of water gushing into the bucket she had found under one of the sinks in the kitchen. No sooner had Vriska fixed her eyes upon it had she felt a flush rise onto her face. Odd. She would have to come to terms with this sudden embarrassment at buckets later. Right now there were fires to put out, damsels to save and what not. Well… damsel anyway. And a male damsel at that.

Upon seeing Tavros's passed out form on the floor, she all but hurled the water at the painting, and tugging the bottom of the boiler-suit up over her face, dragged him out of the room. She was not about to see her team get destroyed simply because Tavros inhaled too much smoke.

"Sollux, take him while I get more water. We need to put that fire out." she gasped, coughing out the smoke between sentences as she passed Tavros to the geek. "Jesus, I wonder if any of the other groups are having this crazy amount of fun. It's unfair to be hogging it all like this."

After three buckets of water, the fire died out and the group shut the door on the smoke, wondering what to do with it.

"We can't just release it outside." Vriska argued. "It'll be a pretty clear signal to where we are."

"How about when night fallth? The other teams thouldn't be able to thee it then."

Sollux made a good case, and so it was decided that they would wait for the skies to darken more before the smoke would be let out. In the mean time, however, they focused on their fallen team mate.

"Poor Tavroth. He'th taking the bulk of the thit at the moment."

"A meat shield, you mean?"

"Yeth, I gueth you could thay that."

"Urg, come oooooooon. Wake up, Tavros." she crooned over his face, lightly slapping his cheeks. He had been laid out on one of the sofas in the living room, his small form hidden beneath a duvet as Sollux tried to make the boy somewhat comfortable. Vriska imagined that he could not wait for the growth spurt that would doubtless come soon to accompany its good friend 'wavy, breaking voice'. At her words, he stirred a little, and with a little more encouragement (face slapping) he woke and was greeted with a bottle of water being shoved in his face. "Drink this."

"That's what I, uh, tend to do with water."

"So witty. You know, maybe if you put some of that bravado attitude into getting the hell better, we wouldn't be in this situation." she smirked, then ruffled his hair, messing it up more than before… if possible.

Night soon fell and Sollux volunteered to be the one to let out the smoke, as he was the one who had caused it in the first place. Once it was all gone, Tavros and Vriska entered the room once more, the former being wheeled in on the wheelie-chair, as hell, they may as well use it at some point.

Their stuff reeked of smoke, but did not seem to be ill affected by it. Vriska's dice were kept safe, nestled in the velvet of the casing, with Tinkerbull whiffing a little and Sollux's iPhone not looking worse for the wear, due to it being in his pocket the whole time, as always.

"Well. It could, uhh, be worse I guess."

"It could almost always be worse, squirt." she said, pursing her lips. "Anyway, where will we sleep tonight? We can't sleep in here, we'll hack up our lungs the next morning or whatever."

So they slept in the living room, with the two sleepers sharing the sofa, and the person keeping watch sitting on the armchair. Sometime in the early hours of the morning, Vriska sat up alert in the chair. She could hear something, or rather some _one_. Creaking echoed down the corridor that went past the living room.

It was probably just the house settling… yeah.

Another creak. Well, it seemed that this house had oddly regular settling boards… but it was not as if there was heating in this house; the fact that she could see her breath was evidence enough of that. So it was not that things were expanding as they heated…

As silently as possible, she stood, padding over to where Sollux and Tavros lay sleeping with the knife gripped firmly in her hand. Should she wake them? If it was a false alarm then a shit storm would doubtlessly be released from Sollux who really likes his sleep, and Tavros wouldn't exactly be an issue. But what if they made a noise as they woke, and gave away the fact that they were awake? Was she thinking too hard about this?

A thud sounded just outside the door to the living room, and the footsteps then receded once more. But Vriska did not collect whatever had been left outside, for it could be a trap, and they could still be just outside the door for all she knew. So she waited… and waited… and waited until morning, when the sun shot its irritatingly perky rays through the window. Yet despite her annoyed metaphors, relief flooded through her body at the appearance of the sun… even if it was fake.

The boys woke a couple of hours after sunrise, as Vriska could not contain the curiosity at what lay outside the door. It could potentially kill or maim her, and hey, curiosity killed the cat, but hell, she was nosy and was not getting any younger.

"Someonedroppedsomethingoffinthenight, andI'vebeenwaitingforyoutowakeup, butyou'reawakenowsoimmagetit." Vriska splurged as an explanation before dashing to the door and finding an innocent looking box. She gave a quick look down either side of the corridors before gently picking it up and carrying it inside.

She sat on the armchair, the box cradled between her crossed legs with Tavros and Sollux on the sofa opposite. Feeling like Pandora, she lifted the lid up, expecting perhaps a bomb, or a venomous snake or something, but instead her eyes widened, for nestled in the fabric of the box was a pure white magic-8-ball.

"Oh." she gasped and pulled it from the box delicately, clutching it between her outstretched fingers. Kicking the box onto the floor, she swapped to her usual magic-8-ball pose, with the orb held in her left hand, the right resting on her leg and said a silent vow that she would never smash this one _ever_. But then again, addiction is a powerful thing, and so she would have to be careful. "What to ask? Hmm… how about, 'is Group Eight going to get through to the next level?'"

Sollux had picked up the box and was rummaging about through its contents, looking for a clue as to where it came from. Upon finding a small folded note, cried out, "Vrithka, thtop!" just as she shook the ball forcefully… and then it blew up, and the note tumbled to the ground along with Vriska's left arm.

Landing face up on the ground, Vriska's remaining eye just about picked up the carefully scribed words on the note. 'I am going to blow up in your face.'

* * *

**== > This doesn't look good, be the French chick**

You are now Marie Antoinette, on your way to meet the Dauphin of France for the first time-

**== > Stop messing around! Besides, Marie Antoinette was Austrian, and that was centuries ago. Be Aradia**

You are now Aradia Medigo

Well, that was a riveting message to wake up to, Aradia thought as the facility owner's voice left the room. Deciding to have a lie in that morning had proven to be a bad idea, as she had missed most of the message, and it was clear from Nepeta's expression that it had been an important one.

Since the previous evening, Nepeta's condition had improved drastically with the immense pain coming from her temples lasting a couple of hours. In fact, she had woken in the night as relieved Aradia from her guard duty, so convinced was she of the nature of her recovery. Yet Equius was still keeping an eye on her, understandably, in case she suddenly turned bad again. The result of the previous night's pain were the tips of two bright yellow horns poking from the buds on her head. They were not sure whether to be horrified or amazed, in all honesty. While the fact that she, and indeed the rest of them, would be growing horns was fairly astonishing… but then again, there was also the point on how she would never be able to blend into society again now. With the grey skin, one could just about cover it with a thick coat of foundation, and the eyes, covered with dark sunglasses. But horns? Unless one was willing to wear a hat at all times, they guessed, there was little you could do.

"Non! C'est dégoûtant, ça!" Aradia hissed once Nepeta had filled her in on the announcements message. "So… we will have to kill quelqu'un? That is despicable! This is surely about controlling us, no? If we are willing to go as far as, euh, as murdering other human beings simply because they say so, then they can use us however they want! Merde!"

"Well, they may as well put us to some use," Equius shrugges. He had seemed oddly different that morning, as if Aradia's words the night before had had some effect on him. He must want the bow and arrow fairly badly. But still, it was good… albeit a little weird seeing him so pensive. "Yet I doubt the majority of us will provide as even half-decent soldiers. The effect that murder will have on young minds such as our own will be wholly negative."

"Excuse me fur the language, but _duh_. If we're broken then it'll make us easier fur them to mould us into the shapes they want, which at the moment looks like an army of mutant child soldiers," Nepeta offered, the serious tone to her voice still going strong, and Aradia wondered where the carefree, childish Nepeta had gone. "But one of us is going to have to do the deed, aren't they? Kill someone? And I think it's going to have to be me."

"Non, Nepeta! Pourquoi?"

"Why? Because you're too sweet, and Equius has enough complexes to last him a lifetime, what with the recent… developments in strength going on."

"Nepeta…" he growled at this, not wanting her to divulge his problems.

"Oh come on, Equius, she deserves to know! Besides, it's not like it's super well hidden or anything," she said, rolling her eyes at his expression, which was essentially a pout. "Either way, it's going to be me taking someone down."

"I forbid you from speaking on the matter, Nepeta."

"But!"

"No! I do not want to talk about this." His voice sounded sad, quiet and at right-angles to the strength he seemed to exude. Damn it, why could he not be simple!

"We're all going through, euh, shit at the moment," Aradia smiled in what she hoped was an encouraging way. "But hiding from it will only lead to more pain."

"It does not befit you, that crude language." But it was said with a small smile. Well, it was not exactly a hug, but _damn it_ , it was a start.

"Et bien, how about this. I'll tell you about my problems, and you tell me about yours. D'accord?"

With a nod, they sat opposite each other on the bed, neither noticing that Nepeta had slunk out of the room with a smirk on her face. Aradia told him about her life as a maroon blood, about her tall, French mother who'd had to sleep around to get her high-end job, and her South-Korean father who loved her so much he accepted it. Equius had frowned at this stage, expecting such things as resorting to sex to get jobs when one was a low-blood, but not at how her parents still loved one another still.

The Parisian told him of a mutant, one from the old days, where it was not all elegantly grey-tinted skin, and yellow eyes, but one with a tumour in her brain that made her act wild. She said that this mutant had killed her maman's father, and that this mutant was her grandma, and since then her mum had set out to make sure all mutants were locked up… except then the mutations began to change, and it was no longer locking up those that are a danger to themselves and those around them, but locking up children with nothing more than a splotch of grey on their nose. And how when Aradia found out that she was a mutant, that she was terrified that her family would reject her so she desperately tried to hide it, resorting to trying to gouge off the horn nubs, to shave off the grey spots of her skin until she would pass out, and then begin again the next day.

While speaking on this topic, Aradia's fingers unconsciously began to trace over the white ridges of scar tissue dotted here and there over the skin of her arms. Looking at the buds of her horns, Equius noticed that there were still scabs covering the surface of them, with even worse scaring there than on her arms. Although he did not express it, he was concerned for her, whether the self-mutilation was still occurring, and he wondered if the maiming would affect the growth of her horns.

But not once did she cry. She was strong and would not break down in front of this weird Scotsman. No.

There was something oddly… admirable, Equius was finding, in this girl with the wide mouth, and the large, dark eyes and the beginnings of a slight swagger to her walk. Ugh, those gutter-bloods with their powers of seduction! Even as thirteen year olds, it was beginning to show.

"Euh… is it normal for you to sweat so much? Would you like a towel?" she asked, doing her best to conceal a disgusted expression.

"Ah. Yes, but I can get it."

Once he had towelled himself down (although since more sweat was replacing that which he had removed every second, there was little point) he sat down and hesitantly, slowly began to tell her shards of his story. Much of it she had heard from Nepeta, who was more liberal about such things with Aradia who had seemed fine to talk to. What he told her was of his rapidly increasing strength. While he had never been scrawny, recently he had been getting outrageously strong and could easily destroy most objects with nothing more than his fists.

"It is simply a matter of self-control," Aradia had said to him afterwards. "If we were not here, then I would recommend meditation and certain forms of, euh, martial arts, non? You must harness the strength."

But it was then when a voice cried out " _Equius_!" before being silenced, perhaps with a hand, perhaps with something else and the door was kicked open, Nepeta squirming in some heavily muscled boys arms. He had an arm locked around her neck, and despite her best efforts could not break free. This boy had the makings of a heavyweight boxer, and was soon joined by another with a similar build. Equius looked miniscule compared to the two sixteen year olds, as he was built up mainly of leaner, corded muscle. And as for Aradia, well… if Equius looked small, then she may as well be microscopic.

Her eyes then narrowed as she recognised them. The boy on the left was the one who had slapped her butt in the first few minutes of this fiasco, and presumably that on the right was another from his team.

"Group One." The right said. "Thought you'd like to know the name of the group going to kill you."

"Merci beaucoup, connard," Aradia spat, and then added a few more fairly coarse sentences in French, describing just how ugly his face was, and the various graphic ways she hoped he could impale himself on a rake. "What do you want for the release of Nepeta?"

"Oh!" The right chuckled, mocking her boldness and making a big show and dance of it. He then put on an atrocious French accent and turned to his companion, "Oh! Oh, sacre-bleu, I don't know, Lenuit. What do you think?"

"How about you let us beat up that guy there, and we'll give her back," The left, Lenuit, shrugged. Aradia could have laughed. From what she had seen of Equius's strength, it was pretty insane and not something to be taken lightly. Until, that is, he added, "But I want him tied up, because I'm not gonna misunderestimate him again."

"It's just underestimate, dumbass." Nepeta hissed when Essair's hand slipped a little, for which she was rewarded with a quick jerk of his arm, crushing her windpipe a little and making her hack in pain. She glanced across to where Equius stood, her eyes speaking for her while her mouth could not, and somehow some form of plan was conducted. The blue-blood glanced at Aradia, giving a small nod before stepping forwards.

"Stop there!" Essair, the brawn on the right, ordered. Without the lust for revenge clouding his vision he could clearly remember the damage the Scotsman had caused with little effort on his part.

"Are you really… so weak that you… need to tie him… up?" Nepeta croaked, squeezing the words out the best she could.

Essair laughed, "I'm not the one beating him up. You can't taunt me into your bullshit, bitch."

It was evident from the earlier attack that Equius did not take well to people calling his morail a bitch, which was understandable really. He lunged forwards and smacked Essair in the jaw with his fist, causing the boy to fly back into the wall with a thud. Quick as a lioness, Nepeta broke free of his grip and pushed away from his body before it hit the wall, her retractable knives ripping forwards, aiming towards his neck. She grabbed him by the front of his boiler suit, the razor-sharp blades of one hand mere millimetres away from the jugular.

Lenuit smirked, deciding that Nepeta's act was a bluff. Pity that it wasn't.

She slowly gouged one of the knives into Essair's arm, making him tightly clench his teeth to stop the curses and cries of pain.

"The mighty huntress saunters over to the fallen boar, her claws out and ready to take it out quickly if it threatens her," Nepeta narrated, keeping the knives at his neck once more, ignoring Equius's small smirk. "She gives it a look of pity, as she would not normally kill such a troubled creature, but times are hard, and she has cubs to feed."

Nepeta paused, giving Essair a look. She felt a little guilt at how she was threatening him, when it was clearly Lenuit who had an issue to settle with Equius, and was likely just dragging the other boy along. But as she had said: times were hard and they had to kill someone to get through to the next round, and it seemed it would be this boy.

"W-wait, wait a second. There's gotta another group you could kill, huh? I mean, what did I do to you?" Essair stammered, avoiding eye contact. Nepeta faltered slightly in her position, just enough for the boy to barrel forwards and knock her to the ground, pummelling her with blows from his fists.

But before Equius could rip the hulking mass from her, another did the deed as a tall, spindly tangle of limbs leapt towards Essair and, after picking up the heavyweight's club from the floor, smacked him around the head hard enough to create a dent.

"Quick," the newcomer said, pointing towards where Lenuit was about to charge. "You've gotta kill the motherfucker before he dies as well, or your group won't get through to the next fucking round."

The olive-blooded girl nodded, prepared to go kill the boy despite how she could barely stand, and so was surprised when an arrow shaft suddenly buried itself into Lenuit's chest, piercing the heart neatly. Essair received another blow around the head, killing him at the same time as a second arrow shot Lenuit in the eye. They were both absorbed into the floor, and on the other side of the village, Yuuqui ended her chuckles of victory as she felt her body bubble over with pain, and she too sank into the tarmac without a trace.

The disembodied woman's voice filled the room for the final time. "Enough. We have our four groups: Group Seven, Group Eight, Group Nine and Group Ten. Congratulations. Return to the plaza, and you may leave the village. Note that any killing of these final groups will result in your own death. That is all."

* * *

End of part one.

**== > Enter The Retainment Organisation for Lucid Liathdaonna.**


End file.
